Not Another SI Fic: Part 4 End of Evangelion
by Enigmatic Magus
Summary: The finale to NASIF4 the events of the movie come an angel early and with some moderate changes. See how a renegade NERV bolstered by the Galactic Empire responds to SEELE's assault.
1. Part 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ranma ½, Sailor Moon, System Shock, or Wing Commander. All characters, vehicles, and settings belong to their respective owners, and I'm merely borrowing them for nonprofit entertainment purposes only.

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The third planet orbiting the sun of a rather plain solar system on the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy had guests.

The first guest was currently in a geostationary orbit south of an island nation on the western edge of the planet's largest ocean. Almost exactly one mile in length, the triangular ship was continually oriented towards the nation of Japan, its delicate sensors and communications equipment constantly monitoring a relatively small area near the southeastern coast.

All the information recovered, both functional and useless, was then sent to Earth's second guest, which was currently in a much further geosynchronous orbit, closer to that of the moon. Similar in overall shape to the smaller ship below, the eleven-mile-long vessel had also oriented itself towards Earth, and while its sensors weren't actively trying to pick up everything from the planet below, they were still listening, able to pick up the more powerful transmissions from an entire hemisphere, as opposed to the smaller ship's diminished area of coverage.

The Imperial design- entirely common in another universe but utterly unique here- was anachronistic, possessing technologies evolved over thousands of years, and the power in nearly every system aboard each ship was as staggering as their capabilities to those below. Or they _had_ been, at first.

Now, however, those of the staff of NERV currently aboard the Imperial-II class Star Destroyer were not awed, or even impressed, as another advanced product of a galactic civilization failed to live up to their expectations.

"This is pointless," Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, Director of Project E stated, tossing the delicate-looking device away in disgust. Turning to co-worker and protégé Lieutenant Maya Ibuki, the doctor sighed, before speaking. "Tell Kyle we're going to need him to interface. This thing's too powerful to risk activating _here_, and we'll never get results at this rate."

"Yes, ma'am," the lieutenant replied, before punching the order into the datapad she had on hand. '_Here_' was one of the smaller Star Destroyer's hangars, heavily modified during construction to act as a bay for housing Evangelion Units- huge biomechanical humanoid constructs that tended to defy definition. Despite their robotic outer appearance, inside their colorful armor lie a mostly biological beast, cloned and modified from the very creatures they were designed to battle, Angels. Unfortunately, as advanced as it was, the original technology came from this Earth; because of that, both testing and modification were sometimes much more difficult considering the clash of technologies.

"Also, see if SHODAN can get the schematics for the Pribnow Box, and whether or not the design can be modified and adapted up here somehow," the doctor said, as she wiped some of the accumulated grease and sweat from her hands. Glancing around for a moment, her eyes came to rest on a relatively empty corner where a secondary control room protruded. 'There,' she decided. 'If we can retrieve a relatively functional body for the simulation unit, we can monitor pilot-unit interaction from in there.'

The whole hangar, she knew, had once been capable of being exposed to vacuum. While that was impossible now (or, at the very least, _dangerous_, thanks to the modifications), the control room left behind would be perfect. Its thick transparisteel windows would be able to withstand the pressure of the fluid in the tank she'd have to have installed with minimal modification.

Sighing, she realized that the cooling fluid for the tank would also need to be obtained, and somehow ducted into here. The logistics of such an operation should have staggered her, but she knew there were probably half a dozen ways she didn't know about that it could be done.

Focusing her attention back on the cause of her frustration, she frowned again in thought. 'I'd really prefer to be doing this at Matsushiro.' Before her, in almost ridiculous-looking restraints, was a black and green Evangelion Unit, with the numbers 04 stenciled in various locations. 'Not that it needs them. The color alone makes it easy enough to identify which unit is which,' she mused. Still, the decision hadn't been hers, and the bureaucrats below had demanded they be properly marked during their inception.

The ship they were on, _The Nerve_, almost mockingly named after the organization she worked for since its not-so-humble beginnings, was the smaller of the two ships, and she knew that currently, it was monitoring the situation back home. 'Home' being the currently-blockaded city of Tokyo-3, from which Ritsuko and Lieutenant Ibuki had come, as well as the two Lieutenants manning the ships modified Bridge, Shigeru Aoba and Makoto Hyuga. While Dr. Akagi was here, trying once again to interface with Unit-04 without setting it off on a destructive rampage, those two were still trying to interface the ships new MAGI-system to the Imperial-level sensor grid.

"Man, whoever wired this together definitely went for the brute-force approach," Lieutenant Hyuga said, leaning over his terminal with a frown.

"Hah! If we could only have been so lucky," Lieutenant Aoba retorted from where he crouched near an opened service panel. Before him lay yards of colored wire, now exposed for him to dig through in order to find the specific one his laptop was indicating he needed. "Tell me again why Dr. Akagi isn't here for this?" He bent down after consulting a diagram on a datapad nearby, reaching in up to his shoulder for a moment before pulling out the end of a Cat-5 cable and connecting it to a second laptop sitting nearby.

"She wants us to get some more hands-on experience with the system. Doesn't want to be the only one able to fix it if something goes wrong," Hyuga replied, before glancing over his shoulder at the other Lieutenant to verify what his console was telling him. "You're up? Good. Let's try rerouting the sensors through a single unit, instead of all three."

Aoba frowned. "You sure? Back in Tokyo-3, it took all three to handle the sensor input, and these should be able to pick up a lot more."

"They also had to run an entire city. This system has hardly anything to chew on. Think we should try assigning one of them tasks until its workload is maxed, then start on the next? Or should we even the load on all three?"

"Even load across the board. That way there's room to shift jobs around," Aoba replied quickly.

Hyuga nodded, typing something in rapidly, and a moment later the console beeped at him. Turning to look at his co-worker he smirked, "Thinker's chewing through the data with room to spare."

"Huh," Aoba grunted, before turning back to the laptop. "You want to give Lover life support and Fighter defensive systems?" he asked, listing off the remaining cores of the MAGI. Each was named after the personality of the two ships' combined leadership.

'Thinker' was named after Nabiki Tendo, or Admiral Tendo to the crew aboard the _Jupiter's Thunder_, and she was, like it sounded, analytical at heart, though some would also go so far as to call her mercenary. Aoba wasn't quite sure of the entire story, but she had, apparently, come from a different universe than the other two leaders of the two-ship fleet, and after temporarily returning to her home universe, had been taken along for the ride when the _Thunder_ had left, with no guarantee it would return.

'Lover,' was named for Makoto Kino, who, like the Admiral, was also from a different universe than both the ships and the overall commander of the fleet. Unlike Nabiki, Makoto had yet to return to her home, and was under the impression that it was still somewhere ahead in their journey. While not as passive as the name made her out to be, she had apparently once gone around fighting demons or monsters (the explanations he had gotten weren't specific, and he hadn't asked for elaboration) and called herself a sailor-suited warrior of love and justice. As far as Hyuga and he were concerned, anyone declaring that much was probably lucky getting stuck with such a label. Not that they'd ever say that out loud. Apparently Mrs. Kino could summon lightning and throw it with deadly accuracy, something Dr. Akagi had vehemently protested, despite having seen it personally. Or so the rumors said.

The final system, 'Fighter,' was named after the de facto leader of both ships, who had apparently come from a third universe that had been described as both boring and uneventful. Kyle, or 'Lord Kyle' to the crew, was anything but boring and uneventful, though that was, by his own admission, due to events that hadn't happened in his home universe, where 'this entire mess began,' as he sometimes said. Aoba wasn't sure what to make of the man, though he knew enough not to piss him off. If he didn't use his bizarre-yet-effective martial arts on you, he just needed a splash of water to change _form_ and become an angel, though he (or 'she' as an angel)still fought on their side. It was still disturbing to watch, even after he had proven himself in battle with the native Angels of this universe.

Fighting the encroaching Angels was what NERV and the Evangelions had ostensibly been designed for. While Kyle had shed light on NERV's true purpose, the staff on hand had quickly taken up the public mission for real, and since then, had done their best to fight the Angels until they stopped coming. While Lieutenant's Aoba and Hyuga fought from the bridge of NERV because it paid the bills, others fought for revenge.

Misato Katsuragi, Major in NERV and previous caretaker of two of the organization's pilots, was one such person. She was the sole survivor of Second Impact, the event which had initiated the Angel war and literally reshaped the face of the world. Unlike Dr. Akagi or the bridge crew, she was currently Earth-side, helping oversee the second set of modifications to Tokyo-3's defenses after a battle with an Angel had gone unexpectedly.

"Tactical Ops to Command, we're ready to activate," she said into her commlink. It was Imperial technology, but she didn't mind; the small size and clearer reception made things easier, and she enjoyed the lack of eavesdroppers on the command channel. Any Earth-based technology, she knew, would fall to rusting pieces long before it began to make heads or tails of the encryption system used.

"Secondary and tertiary uplinks standing by, you're clear to proceed," Commander Fuyutsuki's voice came back a moment later. She waved to the Technicians huddled around a large gray device, and they nodded back before activating the device.

"Uplink established, we're getting a clear signal," the Commander said a moment later, deep within the bowels of Tokyo-3. NERV Headquarters -looking almost identical to the bridge of the starship named (and shaped) after it- was pyramidal in design, and deep inside, at the top of the Level Two bridge sat Kozo Fuyutsuki. He was fit enough to be topside helping despite his graying hair, but as the most Senior NERV Officer, he knew his place was down here, overseeing the repairs and ready to tackle whatever problems might crop up as the day dragged on.

"Commander, all channels check out. Should I dispatch the Major to the next substation?" A temporary technician asked from the tier below.

"How many more have we got?" he asked, glancing up at the holographic map that took up a large section of the hollowed out chamber. He knew roughly how many had been in the ruined area before, but the hardware brought down from the ships in orbit was more powerful and could cover more area, skewing the numbers.

"Just one, sir; The MAGI insisted we place a redundant backup station with built-in emitters just north of Crater Lake 3," the technician replied.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Dispatch the major and her team," he ordered, before diverting his attention to the monitor built into his desk. The previous Commander had rarely used his Command-level access here on the bridge, preferring to work in his darkened office, but Fuyutsuki didn't care for the oversized and barren room, preferring to work here, where he was needed if anything were to go wrong. Even then, the staff of NERV had proven themselves repeatedly when the chaos of battle threw them a curve. His role, he mused, had largely become administrative, the staff that manned the level below his usually capable of giving reasonable orders under pressure.

Glancing up at the screen again, then down at the technician working at Lieutenant Ibuki's station, he made a mental note to bring up promotions for the standard bridge crew at the next performance review meeting. Almost all the staff was overdue, and only the previous Commander, as well as NERV's budget, had prevented them from doing so in the past.

Gendo Ikari, whom Fuyutsuki had replaced, was currently locked up in the brig of the _Jupiter's Thunder_, and had been there since just after the arrival of the warship. Not that he'd ever voice his opinions, but once more, Fuyutsuki wondered where they'd be had that ship never arrived. He was grateful, to be sure, but he was only human, and as such, he knew it natural to wonder about the 'what-ifs' and 'might-have-beens' when he had an idle moment.

One of the biggest changes to the timeline, or 'scenario,' as some of the more sarcastic took to calling the progression of events Kyle had brought with him, was the loss of Asuka and subsequent deactivation of Unit-02. Unlike the other pilots, Asuka had been outspoken, competitive, and full of pride. That attitude, however, had been a front, and when her true self had emerged to the forefront in a self-destructive frenzy, Pilot Soryu had been absorbed into Unit-02, from which only she could decide when to emerge.

The Four-eyed Unit-02, painted a bright red, was currently being kept in stasis in a gigantic Eva-sized locker, where hundreds of sensors watched and waited for any sign of Asuka's projected return. The locker was aboard _The Nerve_, off in a corner across the hangar diagonally from where Dr. Akagi had chosen to place a Pribnow Box.

Nearby, Unit-00 was being refitted by a mixed crew of Imperial and NERV technicians, who were finishing up replacing the remaining legacy systems with their Imperial counterparts. The blue unit's sole eye was covered by a darkened lens, giving the impression that it was merely sleeping, much like the other units.

The Pilot of Unit-00, both a Pilot for NERV, and a Lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, was currently in the primary control room overlooking the converted hangar, the slanted floor-to-ceiling windows giving an unobstructed view of the activity below. The statuesque Pilot was wearing an Imperial Navy uniform, the gray outfit doing little to draw attention from her most striking features.

Lieutenant Rei Ayanami had blue hair and red eyes. Unlike the hair, which could have been dyed, her eyes were naturally blood-red, and no colored contacts could look so convincing. While most of those aboard the ship and at NERV below had long since gotten used to it, she still received stares from the occasional person who hadn't been forewarned, though those stares tended to waver when she returned them with the steady look of her own.

Still, despite the occasion contest of wills, she was used to the stares, mostly because she had always been this way, and knew there was nothing she could do about it. Her entire outlook on life had been similar, though recently she had been coaxed into taking some steps towards more independent thinking. Her joining the Navy was one such step, as was her desire to pilot more than just Eva, now that she was aware of the various types of craft she could potentially fly.

Standing behind her, closer to the door, was Shinji Ikari, Lieutenant in the Imperial Navy as well, on loan to NERV after splitting with the organization earlier. His dark brown hair was not quite long enough to obscure the blue eyes currently focused on the purple figure clamped into one of the loading bays. His Evangelion: Unit-01.

Unlike the three other Evangelion Units below, Unit-01 was unique. It had been created from Lilith, not Adam, and its capabilities were utterly indeterminate. Every time the limits of what it could do were decided upon it broke them; a literal walking contradiction. And within the heart of the beast itself lie the soul of the young Lieutenant's mother, the driving force that enabled Unit-01 to break the rules and go the extra distance to protect her son.

Yui Ikari had been missing and presumed dead for over a decade, and yet still held power over those around her. From Shinji's desire to be with her, to Fuyutsuki's wish to meet her one last time, Dr. Akagi's attempts to outdo her, and Gendo's plans to release her, _hold her_, once more... a majority of the personality issues plaguing NERV could somehow be traced back to Yui, and had the larger starship above not appeared, the events would have continued to a fatal, apocalyptic conclusion.

Behind the two pilots, the bulkhead door opened, and the third active pilot stepped in after spotting the other two standing inside.

"So this is where you two disappeared off to," Kyle said, drawing their attention away from the windows and the Evangelion Units beyond. Glancing out himself, he sighed at the restrained form of Unit-04, before returning his attention to the people in the room.

"Commander," Rei acknowledged.

"Sir!" Shinji said, looking somewhat surprised, "you're awake!"

Kyle smirked. "Yeah, finally. I've been up for a couple hours now. Had to talk with Makoto and Nabiki, then SHODAN some, but I thought I'd come thank you two before we headed on down to the post-op debrief and the subsequent... _meeting_." His voice had gone from cheery to almost guttural as he growled the last word out.

While most of the people from this universe seemed to have little problem with them, The Imperials and their leaders seemed to abhor NERV's numerous meetings, preferring to act, and only after looking through some of their training had Shinji realized they had been drilled to handle most plausible situations. The debriefings had been expected, but a majority of the others had been the responsibility of Moffs, of which Kyle's fleet was decidedly missing.

"You don't like these meetings, do you?" Shinji asked, tentatively. "Sir," he amended, a second later.

Rei, who had also browsed the training regiment, knew that NERV was primarily a civilian agency, despite its use of military-grade hardware and overall militant structure. While she may not have understood as well as those older and more experienced with such things, she knew that the Imperials were simply unimpressed with the lack of training in their NERV counterparts, and NERV was annoyed with the Imperial's lack of patience and aggressive demeanor.

Kyle shrugged. "It's not so much that I dislike them as... well..." he paused, as if thinking deeply, before smirking, "yeah, I hate 'em. What's to like?"

"They can help your performance in later missions by pointing out viable tactics, alternatives, or procedures only noticeable after reviewing previous operations," Rei offered.

Kyle blinked. "That's the debrief; those aren't so bad. And are you saying you _like_ that?"

"It improves my performance, and can help me survive longer. Following Lieutenant Ikari's battle with the Fourth, he moves around on the field more, indicating that he learned to _not _stand still during an engagement without a good reason," she elaborated.

"I didn't learn that in a meeting," Shinji protested.

Rei shook her head. "You did not. I did. One to NERV, SHODAN."

Kyle and Shinji were left staring at the spot she had been standing as the Fleet's Artificial Intelligence activated _The Nerve's_ teleportation system and sent the blue-haired pilot to the planet's surface.

"Blunt, isn't she," Kyle quipped finally, before smiling slightly.

"I... yes sir," Shinji said, nodded.

"Well, I guess that's that. I _had _wanted to thank you two, but I guess it'll have to wait. SHODAN, two more to NERV," the taller pilot said.

"Next time, try to consolidate your group if you intend to travel _from_ the same place _to_ the same place." SHODAN said, the condescending tone indicating her annoyance at having to repeat an action.

"Quit bitching. It's not like this-" Kyle began from the control room; "-uses up a lot of CPU cycles. Or are you less powerful than I originally thought?" he finished from the corridor in NERV where the two appeared.

While the teleporter was advanced, even it couldn't penetrate the hundreds of meters of reinforced concrete and steel armor that made up one of Tokyo-3's primary defenses.

Shinji looked around with a frown. "Where are we?" he finally asked, moving over to a nearby window. Unsure of their location himself, Kyle followed, scowling as he glanced out at the pyramidal NERV Headquarters building, below and across the geo-front from where they stood.

"Somewhere above level thirty, and in..." he frowned in thought for a second, "E-block, I think. Or maybe U; I might be thinking upside down."

Shinji's eyes widened. "You recognize this place?"

Kyle laughed once before moving towards a junction in the corridor ahead. "Hell no. I just remember all the corridors in the armor are divided into alphabetical blocks, and the levels go up from Zero, which is Central Dogma. Since we're above the Pyramid, I know we're above level thirty."

"Oh," Shinji replied, looking down. After all this time, Shinji still wasn't sure how to handle the Commander. Or Lord, as the Imperials referred to him. Most adults, Shinji knew, would probably have tried to come off sounding smarter than they were. He knew Dr. Akagi hated it when someone pointed out that she had made a mistake. Glancing ahead, he smiled softly to himself as he remembered that it was usually one of the Imperial Leaders who pointed such mistakes out. Kyle did it, but Nabiki also seemed to enjoy it. Even Makoto had on occasion, when she seemed angry enough.

That reminded him... "Kyle... sir... Umm... what's your rank?"

Kyle paused mid-stride, turning to look back and down at the surprised Lieutenant. Not that he was trying to seriously intimidate the kid, but he had to stall for a moment as he thought up the best response. It had been the same way back in the Wing Commander Universe, when he'd been discreetly told that the rank he'd chosen for himself was actually _below_ his true station. Since then, he'd avoided bringing it up, but when plainly asked, he didn't have so easy an out. "My rank, huh? Why do you ask?"

"I was looking through the field manual Admiral Yuki issued me, and I just realized you never wore rank insignia or a uniform, so I don't know how else to find out, sir." Shinji's reply was truthful, and served to make the older pilot wince a little.

"I'm above ranks, since I asked pretty much for the ship itself. Honestly, according to my aide, as far as the Imperials are concerned, I'm their Emperor. But since I'm Emperor of just a ship... well, _two_ ships, now- I prefer to take a less... _pompous_-sounding position."

"You're an Emperor!?" Shinji squeaked, surprised.

Kyle frowned at his reaction. "And that's why I ordered everyone not to say anything. It's _just_ a- a pair of ships. To my crew, whose very existence is because of a rather greedy wish, I'm their Emperor. To you and everyone who didn't appear along with _Jupiter's Thunder_, I'm simply the Supreme Commander of Imperial Forces." As he spoke, he started walking, and by the time he finished, he and Shinji had stepped into a monorail that slowly took off before speeding around the geo-front.

"Is that an official position in the Galactic Empire?" Shinji asked as the train sped along the tracks.

"It is. But if you come with me, and we find ourselves in the Star Wars universe, I hope you won't dispute it when a big black-armored cyborg comes along with the same title and position," Kyle joked. Shinji wasn't sure what to make of that, and it showed on his face. With a sigh, Kyle turned to a camera in the corner, knowing SHODAN was watching. "Schedule both Pilots for remedial pertinent pop-culture training."

"Remedial _what_?" Shinji asked, his confused expression growing.

"You're watching Star Wars. You'll probably understand a lot more after it's over."

Shinji wasn't sure about that, but if it was an order, he knew he'd have to comply. 'And,' he mused to himself, 'I could be ordered to do a lot more than just watch a movie.' "What rank should I refer to you as?" he asked, finally, as the train pulled to a stop near the Headquarters structure.

"If you _must_ refer to me by rank, 'Commander' will do, or 'Supreme Commander,' if you want to sound somewhat pretentious. Since you're _not_ one of the people who appeared with the ship, however, I'll become very upset if you call me 'Lord,' and if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer it if you just referred to me by my name like you have been."

"But sir, that's not-" Shinji started to protest, unsure how exactly to tell the Supreme Commander that the Rules and Regulations required him to refer to a superior as such. He didn't get far, however, before his protest was interrupted.

"Captain Archer already pointed out to me that things don't work that way. But rules can be changed, or overridden, and I'm telling you right now, _as an order_, that that's the way things are."

Shinji blinked, and looked down as they continued to their destination, afraid he'd angered his superior. He wasn't sure how the Commander would punish him if angered enough, but he was Shinji's best chance of seeing his mother again, and getting away from Tokyo-3, where everything bad in his life seemed to exist.

He'd told no one of it, but his goal, now that he knew everything about the Evangelions and NERV and the original timeline and his family, was to leave this place, this _world_, with his mother and Asuka and Rei. Leave, and live a relatively simple life somewhere NERV and the Angels and everything bad could never bother him again. He knew it was unlikely, especially if he tried to stay with Kyle and Makoto and Nabiki; and Asuka was trapped inside Unit-02, and Rei seemed more interested in working... but it was his goal, his dream, and he didn't want to jeopardize it.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, as they approached the conference room.

"Don't be sorry, you didn't do anything wrong," Kyle replied, before stopping outside the door. "You've led a fairly tough life, Shinji. I'm not going to ride you about it, but I was hoping that, when all this is over, we could be friends, kind of." Not that he figured Shinji would be interested in many of the same things, or anything like that, but he had enough subordinates already. Shinji was a new face to talk to, and not yet set in his ways like most of the other people from NERV were. Even Rei was fixated on duty, and admirable as that was, it meant most conversations with the First ended up being job-oriented. Shinji was probably one of the few people he could shoot the shit with as it were, and he'd be damned if the kid pigeonholed _him_ in an ivory tower inside his own mind.

Shinji, on the other hand, misinterpreted Kyle's meaning. "I don't want your _pity_," he said, scowling.

Kyle blinked at this. Before, Shinji never would have voiced his opinion like that. Maybe he was rubbing off on the kid after all? 'Or,' he thought with a frown, 'more likely, the stress is getting to him. This series is like one massive powder keg.' "What _do_ you want, then?" he asked, finally.

Shinji paused, looking thoughtful as he debated internally how to respond to the question. Finally, honesty won out, though just barely. "Your respect, sir," he said softly.

"Oh, is that all?" Kyle replied with a little laugh, before opening the door. Before he stepped in, however, he winked at Shinji over his shoulder. "Kid, you already have it."

Kyle left Shinji standing there in the doorway as he made his way to his seat, a smirk plastered to his face. The best part was that it was true. He wouldn't defer to Shinji for command orders anytime soon, and initially, he'd been ready to dismiss the kid as a loser who couldn't handle pressure at all, but now? Shinji had saved the world; saved it more than once, _on his own_, without any training once, with little training a second time, and against million-to-one odds a third. While the rest of the Angels up until he had arrived had been joint-efforts, there were also the potential victories that would have happened if he and the _Thunder _had _not_ arrived.

"You're late," Nabiki said, frowning.

Everyone else turned to look at Kyle, who shrugged nonchalantly, "SHODAN put me down on the far side of the city."

"You sure you didn't get lost?" Misato asked, still somewhat embittered to the Imperial leader. When he'd arrived, she'd seen him and his ship as the salvation of NERV, a way to take Shinji and Asuka off the firing line for good, and let them lead the lives they should have been able to. When she'd read what was supposed to happen, she'd been even more sure that Kyle, Makoto and Nabiki had arrived in time to save her and everyone she cared about.

But now, with the loss of Asuka, her excommunication by Shinji, and the overall state of Tokyo-3, far from the ideal place she'd hoped everything would be, she felt betrayed. It wasn't anyone's fault she'd had such high expectations, and the rest of the people at the table knew that, but she was still feeling spiteful, and despite the lack of professionalism it showed, she couldn't help but feel that they, and Kyle in particular, had had a role in taking her charges from her.

"Isn't that _your_ specialty?" Kyle shot back, slipping into his chair. He understood her attitude but didn't agree. And frankly, after a good month of snide remarks, he wasn't feeling sympathetic enough to let them slide without slinging some mud back her way.

"Enough of this!" Commander Fuyutsuki barked, hoping to cull the sniping before it could really get going. While Kyle outranked him to the Imperial Forces, at NERV the Imperial leader was still his immediate subordinate. Hopefully the younger commander would understand that now was not the time.

Kyle bowed his head in acquiescence as Shinji took his seat. Misato opened her mouth to get a final remark in, but held back, realizing she'd lost this confrontation. Scowling, she nodded as well, collapsing back in her chair and resigning herself to simply glaring.

Ritsuko rolled her eyes at the theatrics, glad she'd avoided Misato's temper this time. While she knew Kyle was at the top of the Major's shit-list, she was in close second after her explanation as to why Asuka couldn't be recovered by force. Even after the discussion, Misato had spent the next couple weeks trying to persuade her to attempt it anyway. When it was finally apparent that the Doctor wouldn't budge on the issue, Misato had stormed off and hadn't said a nice word to her since.

"Since almost everyone here has tasks waiting for them, I'll try to keep this brief, but we all know it has to be done, so let's start," Fuyutsuki said, once again gathering the attention of everyone seated. "We'll skip the plan overview, battle-prep, and computer analysis, but we do need to debrief the pilots." He turned to Rei, but didn't speak. It wasn't necessary; she knew the attention meant it was her turn to speak.

"The battle began before deployment operations could be completed..." she started, reciting from memory her accounts of what had happened from the moment her EVA had started falling from the wreckage of the AT-AT barge. Despite it having happened only a week ago, everyone listened to the recounting attentively, as Rei had a habit of pointing out easily-missed details as if they had been blindingly obvious.

When she'd finished, Kyle sat up, knowing his explanation of events was next. Using Rei's detailed explanation as an basis, he quickly pointed out what had happened during the few gaps in Rei's story when she'd been unable to see what he was up to, before going into detail of the conversation he had with Armisael during his _'apparent catatonia'_ as Rei and Dr. Akagi had called it.

"So it spoke to you?" Lieutenant Ibuki asked. She of course had read the summaries before and knew that the same thing had happened with Rei originally, but she couldn't ask the original-timeline Rei what had been said. Here, however, was someone who had actually spoken to the enemy. If they could find out why they were attacking, or what their goals were, then maybe they could find a way to end this war without further loss of life.

Kyle nodded, recognizing her expression and wincing internally as he knew he was about

to crush her hopes. "Armisael was... well, first off, it was a 'she,' or at least presented

herself as such... and she was rather irate at my presence. Called me a bunch of names-"

Misato blinked in surprise. "The angel used profanity?" she asked earnestly. That was a definite surprise. Maybe the angels weren't so far removed from humanity after all.

Kyle shook his head, not having meant to give that impression. "Ahh, no, not exactly; more of the condescending, belittling inflection. Called me 'you' and 'traitor' and 'fool' I think."

"You think?" Dr. Akagi asked, looking up from the clipboard she'd been writing on. Aside from the words he'd quoted, she had written and underlined 'superiority complex' and beside it had written 'god complex' with a question mark following. She, like Lieutenant Ibuki, was interested in the psychology of the Angels, but for a totally different reason. She knew peace was highly improbable, but if they could get a psychological edge on their final foe, they'd potentially have half the battle won, before it even began.

"I wasn't paying too much attention after I realized talking would get us nowhere. After briefly talking to Lieutenants Ikari and Ayanami while they were present, I was paying more attention to the surface below the LCL, and whether or not I could push off enough to clear the surface and let my wings give me the momentum to tackle her.

"You... _assaulted_ the angel inside its mind?" Dr Akagi asked with eyes wide. The audacity of the act should have surprised her, and had it been anyone from NERV, she would have ordered immediate testing for possible psychosis and/or subsequent mental contamination. 'But this is pretty much par for course for Kyle and his crew. I could never fully convey the potential dangers just coming into _contact_ with another being inside their own mindscape implied,' she thought with a frown, before making a note to test the Pilot's brainwaves for any variations sometime that day.

Kyle, however, sighed dramatically at her question, annoyed at the sudden bout of twenty questions this was beginning to shape up into. "Look, it's not like I could have said, 'Please, Miss Armisael, let me out and I'll let you cause your third impact,' right? I had to do something to force her to let me go. And it worked."

Ritsuko nodded. "I understand. It was rash and foolish, but it worked, so this time, I'll admit that the end justified the mean."

Kyle, surprised at the capitulation, nodded. "Right." From there, he went on to describe the rest of the battle, up to his passing out from the pain of being forcibly given a core, his recounting slightly less detailed than Rei's, but clearing up a couple issues her recollection had left untouched.

After the few requests for further details were taken care of, Shinji began his debrief. Unlike Kyle (who clearly hated having to recall everything) or Rei (who seemed indifferent), Shinji enjoyed being able to tell everyone what happened. While his presentation was no more detailed than Kyle's, as well as being shorter, everyone _listened_ to what he had to say about piloting, and it was one of the few times he managed to let others know how piloting felt to him.

When Shinji finished, there were fewer questions for him than had been asked of Rei or Kyle, but he answered then with enthusiasm. When Misato had asked him for clarification near the end, he went over everything calmly, which was something the rest of the people at the table found pleasant after Kyle's relatively flippant attitude.

"Is there anything anyone else has to say about the battle with the Sixteenth before we move on to the next phase of the meeting?" Fuyutsuki asked, knowing most of the questions and comments had been made already.

Before he could move the meeting forward, however, Kyle spoke up, much to everyone's surprise. "I've got something to say, Commander," he said, scooting the rolling chair back and standing up. "After I was incapacitated, leaving an irate Armisael in charge of Unit-04, Rei and Shinji risked their lives and their Evangelions to hold down the berserker Eva before it could rampage through both NERV and Imperial forces nearby." He'd been surprised to hear that both had done so against orders to stand down, and knew that now was the time to express his gratitude, as well as set an example for his counterpart at NERV, who had apparently chosen to focus on the disobeying of orders as opposed to the saved lives.

General Hongo, who'd been monitoring the situation from their makeshift headquarters when Unit-04 had been commandeered by the Angel, nodded her agreement with Kyle as he spoke, briefly catching both Lieutenant's gazes. Some Imperial officers might have preferred underlings who never questioned orders, but she knew that in this instance, the Pilots had made a far better in disobeying.

With an extravagant bow, Kyle thanked both pilots; "-on behalf of the Imperial officers you undoubtedly saved in defiance of questionable orders." At this, he shot Dr. Akagi a glare, since she had been the one to order the pilots to stand down. Ritsuko winced and modified her mental notes to schedule the brainwave test for two weeks from now, instead of one.

Fuyutsuki's eyes narrowed slightly at being put on the spot like this, but even some of the NERV staff had turned to him expectantly. "On behalf of the NERV forces your intervention also protected at great personal risk, you have my thanks, as well."

Rei didn't react much, merely nodding slightly as she usually did, while Shinji seemed to break out of his shell a little, smiling at the two Commanders, before a stray thought killed it. 'Asuka should be here,' he thought, belatedly realizing that would just be asking for trouble. But no, if she had been there, she'd have not only gone in to stop the out-of-control Eva, she'd have probably managed to do so while verbally scolding Dr. Akagi and managing to stop Unit-04 with some flashy move he had little hope of ever copying.

Despite how Commanders Kyle and Fuyutsuki had made it sound, he knew that the ungainly tackle he'd executed in Unit-01, followed by Rei's belly-flop-esque tackle in Unit-00 was far from what Asuka would have had Unit-02 do.

Commander Fuyutsuki cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention before speaking. "The next order of business is the current status of ground forces in the area. Major Katsuragi has been overseeing defense installation, while General Hongo has been overseeing the overall coordination and unification of our defense networks."

Had it been anyone else, Misato would have objected, but while she may not have thought highly of the Imperial Commander at the moment, she felt nothing but respect for the young General who had almost single-handedly drawn up the current defensive web covering the surrounding countryside. What General Hongo lacked in apparent age, she more than made up for in tactical understanding and insight.

General Hongo, on the other hand, was growing weary of the tension between her superior- a man to whom she owed her very existence, as well as willing to stand up for her and her men when others tended to view them as disposable tools- and the purple-haired Major whose drinking habits were more renowned than her keen grasp of military tactics. Still, she'd gotten the assigned jobs done, which was what mattered to the General most, and for that, she'd allow the Major to say her piece before presenting an overview of their current defensive situation.

Misato, realizing the General was deferring to her, activated a pre-programmed display, and the screens mounted around the room came to life. As she spoke, the display would occasionally change as she described each site she'd overseen the installation of NERV or Imperial hardware.

"Most of the sites visited were either radar arrays destroyed during the Fifteenth's incursion, or those that lost forces pulled away to assist in the battle with the Sixteenth." The screen briefly displayed the path taken by Zeruel, and the damaged sites along the path, before switching to show staging points that were deprived of units. "Most of the Imperial forces not destroyed by Unit-04's rampage have returned to their assigned areas, but the remaining gaps in the defenses had to be patched rather quickly."

General Hongo took over, "Instead of replacing every unit and vehicle lost, we repaired what we could, and replaced some of the larger encampments with semi-permanent radar installations." The squat, domed building was as ugly as it was bizarre, and the only reason nobody questioned it was due to the fact that everyone at NERV had seen uglier products of Imperial design perform far better than their appearance would have one think.

The briefing continued for a while, Misato and the General taking turns to explain the arcs of redundant radar coverage, possible corridors of attack, and potential deployment options for the shuffled forces out in the field.

"So, aside from a full-scale surprise invasion, we're back to a defensive norm?" Fuyutsuki asked, as they wrapped up their presentation. Most of the people had paid attention, but it was obvious the details had either gone over some people's heads, or they were aware that the information was less than useful to them.

"That is correct, Commander," Misato answered, before grinning, "I'd say, honestly, that our defenses are better than they were before being destroyed. Even an invasion would have trouble getting in range to do damage without being spotted now."

The Commander of NERV nodded, "Good to hear. Dr. Akagi, you said you had something you needed to ask the pilots?"

Ritsuko nodded, flipping up the page on her clipboard and looking at the one below it as she organized her thoughts. Finally, she looked at Kyle, "Your interaction and subsequent imprisonment of Armisael in Unit-04 has made most forms of testing impossible without you present inside the Entry Plug."

"Oh?" he replied, already having a feeling he knew where this was going.

"You're going to need to interface with Unit-04 for me to get any workable readings from it. And both Rei and Shinji need to be on hand, in case the Unit berserks again."

"Sounds easy enough. When?" the Sub-Commander asked, pleased his assumption had been correct.

"Now wait a minute," Makoto Kino said, leaning forward in her chair. She'd remained quiet this entire time, growing relatively bored with the whole meeting and wishing it would hurry up and end, but this was not how she'd hoped things would wrap up. "Last time Kyle interfaced with that thing, he had something foreign lodged into his chest. What's stopping the angel from doing something worse, this time?"

Nabiki, who had also remained silent, voiced her own opinion, "Unless you can guarantee that there's no risk, I'm going to pull rank here and tell you it's not happening on one of my ships."

Kyle cleared his throat, and Nabiki winced. "Kyle's ships... but you understand my concern. I'm sure the Trio and Admiral Yuki would agree. A Star Destroyer does not have the damage-resistance a forest clearing does."

"The Admiral does have a point," Kyle conceded.

Ritsuko just scowled, setting her clipboard down and crossing her arms. "Look. This is something never before dealt with, and even the MAGI were astounded that you would try something so reckless. Now I have to deal with the fallout. Is it safe? I don't know. But I do know that the only way to find out is testing. And in order to test with the _least_ likely chance of trouble will be if you're in the Entry Plug when we finally reconnect Unit-04's power source."

A couple eyebrows around the table quirked at the outburst, before Kyle chuckled, "I guess that answers that."

"So you'll consent to the tests?" Lieutenant Ibuki asked, leaning forward.

"Down here, yes. But Nabiki's right; until we can verify that activating Unit-04 won't cause any damage, her stipulations make the most sense. Wouldn't you agree?"

Ritsuko waved that off dismissively. "Considering the equipment still missing up there, you'll get no complaints from me. All I ask is access to the MAGI system aboard _The Nerve_. Its input could be helpful, and it's not swamped with the issues bogging down the original MAGI down here."

"Actually," Lieutenant Aoba said, drawing everyone's attention, "Hyuga and I would like to request that the MAGI aboard _The Nerve_ be officially designated. A couple times during the reprogramming, we had issues through the uplink from here."

"Issues?" Dr. Akagi didn't like hearing anything bad about the MAGI. Part of that was pride; her mother _had _designed the system. A far larger portion of that displeasure, however, was the fact that she was responsible for the system, and if something went wrong, she had to drop what she was doing and repair it immediately. NERV had spare Evangelions and Pilots (most of the time); Tokyo-3, however, did not have a spare administrative supercomputer.

This was one of the reasons she was beginning to force the three primary bridge officers to work on the system. Not only could they work on a MAGI that was not an essential part of an entire city's infrastructure, but they could also begin learning some of the more administrative maintenance she was currently forced to do.

Shigeru Aoba winced, not having intended to make the doctor give him that look. "Ahh, nothing like that. Some of the reference commands sent one system looking for a link to the MAGI system at Matsushiro."

"Bet that query died fast," Nabiki mumbled, glancing up at the clock. Everyone smiled bitterly at that. With Tokyo-3 blockaded and cut off from the rest of Japan, its data-links to the rest of the world, along with power, water, natural gas, and roadways had also been cut off. Even radio was intermittent, the military channels strangely silent and the civilian ones within range censored to reveal nothing but what the week's top hits were.

Dr. Akagi appraised the two Lieutenants for a moment, before nodding. "Very well. Do you have a suggestion as well, or did you bring this up so we could discuss it?"

Hyuga blinked, before piping up, "Well, it's the Commander-"

"Sub-Commander," Aoba interrupted, quietly.

"-_Sub_-Commander's Ship, so we can't make the decision-"

"Damn right," Kyle interjected with a small smile.

"-but we assumed with the Terrestrial MAGI systems being numbered, the space-borne system would be Alphabetic; 'MAGI-_Alpha_,' and so on, if any more are produced," the Lieutenant finished.

"Unlikely," SHODAN said, drawing everyone's attention to the speaker her voice had emanated from. "_The Nerve's _MAGI system is in place because the redesign used plans that including housing for the system. In a standard Star Destroyer Bridge, the MAGI would at best occupy guest or storage rooms. At worse, critical systems, turboshafts, ducting or electrical relays would be interrupted. Unless Mr. Kino requests it, all future Imperial ships will be of standard design."

Everyone in the room looked around in surprise, and finally, Commander Fuyutsuki spoke what was on everyone's mind. "Who is Mr. Kino?"

Kyle blinked, "umm... I am."

There was a lot of noise then, as everyone from NERV tried to speak at once, and finally, when they quieted down, Dr. Akagi spoke, ostensibly for everyone still confused. "But... you introduced yourself as 'Kyle.'"

Kyle just nodded, "uh-huh..."

"And your personnel all refer to you as 'Lord Kyle,'" she continued.

Makoto and Nabiki had joined Kyle in his nodding by now. "Uh-huh?"

"So... why didn't you tell us?"

"You never asked?" Kyle replied, looking confused. When it was apparent that's not what they wanted to hear, he shrugged and relented, "It's just..." he trailed off, thinking for a second before shrugging, "It's still kind of new to me. And I'm not really used to it. I just tend to introduce myself as 'Kyle.'" Looking around at all the surprised faces, he sighed. "It probably doesn't help, what with the whole Japanese-American cultural differences," he mumbled,

"New to you? But... didn't you take his name?" Misato asked Makoto, who shook her head.

"He took my name, since he had family back home," she responded. Makoto was enjoying this revelation, since it had secretly annoyed her a little that Kyle had hid the fact for so long. Nabiki had known, of course, and the Imperials more than likely knew. Still, it hadn't been a secret o anything. If anyone had asked, they'd have been told.

"And you don't?" Ritsuko asked, bluntly. Only after speaking did she blushed, realizing how rude that had been.

Makoto glared for a moment, before nodding. "That's right. I was an only child when my parents died in a plane crash." She preferred not talking about it, but the tactless question of the doctor had managed to let her ire win out over her preference.

"As interesting as this is," Commander Fuyutsuki's voice rang out, silencing the few voices still mumbling in surprise, "we've deviated quite a bit from our purpose." The revelation had surprised him as well, but this was definitely not the time to discuss it. At least he now knew what to call the younger man. Up until now, he, like most of the others at NERV, had assumed Kyle had no family name.

"Yeah," Kyle said, frowning a little. The uproar the fact had caused was a little excessive. Still, now they knew, though he'd assumed they had asked someone else before.

"Ahh, right," Makoto Hyuga said, when it was pointed out by SHODAN that he was the last one to 'have the floor' so to speak. "If there aren't going to be any more MAGI systems manufactured, then I can't really see any reason to stick to a set, _series_-based naming system. However, if there's a possibility of more in the future, I'd suggest adhering to a system that can allow subsequent MAGI systems to be designated easily." His suggestion ended somewhat abruptly, and there was a pregnant pause as everyone mulled over what he had said. That or they were still stuck on the previous topic.

Finally, Kyle spoke up, "I don't really see a reason to have more than one MAGI system... Aside from their apparent versatility, a ship-wide AI like SHODAN should work well enough on any subsequent ships built."

"So what do you want to call it?" Nabiki pressed.

"Hmm..." Kyle hummed in thought, before smiling. "Since it's the first MAGI I built, MAGI-Alpha would work..." he trailed off, glancing around expectantly.

"But...?" Misato asked, to which he grinned.

"'But,' it's also the _last_ MAGI I'll ever build, so I'm going to have to go with MAGI-Omega, or 'Omega' for short."

"'Omega?'" Dr. Akagi asked, frowning. That had almost been pretentious, bringing up 'alpha' and 'omega' like that. 'His MAGI system was just a copy of NERV's. Any modifications...' her thoughts paused, as she reconsidered something, 'well, with the technology at his disposal, and no city to administer taking up its attention, I suppose it might prove a _little_ more powerful... from time to time...' Never mind the fact that just a few minutes prior, she'd verbally admitted the MAGI aboard _The Nerve_ was faster. Resigning herself to spending even more time working on that ship and it's odd amalgamation of technology, she returned her attention to the conversation.

------

As the meeting began winding down, the NERV personnel and Imperial officers either dispersing to return to what they were doing, or moving on to start their next scheduled task, a meeting of a different sort was beginning.

In the wake of Second Impact, the Internet had been damaged, as coastal cities, home to millions of servers and hubs had been destroyed in the rising water levels. After years of rebuilding, however, the Internet had been brought back to its former glory, and along side it, like a shadowy twin, a second, more sinister worldwide network had come into being. While it mirrored some aspects of the original network, this private interconnected system was controlled by twelve people. While a few more knew of it, it took MAGI-level processing power to fully interface with it, and proper access codes to do any more than receive an "Access Denied." Anyone caught even _attempting_ to get into the system tended to turn up dead after reading those two words. It was a private party line, and interlopers were dealt with quickly, and terminally.

In the depths of this shadowy cyberspace, eight monoliths sat within a simulated chamber, the dim lights not reaching the digital edges, and before them all sat the image of the person who had gathered them, brought them together, and set them on their path.

"Tokyo-3's arrogance grows with each passing day," one Monolith, labeled "SEELE 04 Sound Only" in glowing red letters stated.

"Their arrogance has merit, the newly installed defenses are as good as those they replaced, if not more so," A second responded, this one "SEELE 07."

"The addition of one unit or one hundred is of no consequence," the seated figure intoned. Had the others been physically present, his statement would have drawn stares, but as they were currently represented by their monolithic avatars, the black structures merely waited, red labeled faces all waiting for Keel Lorenz to continue.

All but one; "This... _lord,_" SEELE 06 spat, "has thwarted every incursion and rendered the scrolls all but useless. I fail to see how anything he's done is merely _inconsequential_."

"Things... have not progressed as we had initially planned, no," Keel conceded, before fixing the monolith with a stare. Despite the headgear hiding his eyes, it was enough for the man behind the monolith to shrink back slightly in his chair, only slightly relieved that his avatar would not display the same failure of confidence. Keel was not a man to cross lightly.

"However," the seated figure continued, "the Angels have come as foretold, and were fought off, one Pilot and one Evangelion Unit disabled, one Unit destroyed, and now we await the final messenger."

"Are you saying this... this _mess_, is, and has all been part of the scenario? That we _mistranslated_ the part about a giant spaceship from another universe coming to render unwanted aid and interfere with carefully laid plans?" SEELE 02 asked incredulously.

"It _is_ a possibility," SEELE 04 conceded, grudgingly.

"Our time grows short, and this solves nothing. You called us here, Lorenz, so I assume you have a plan," SEELE 11 stated, drawing the others' attention.

"Tokyo-3 is too well protected to send the Seventeenth as initially planned," Keel said evenly.

"This is known to us," SEELE 06 replied quickly.

"Their defenses, however, are coordinated by the MAGI system of Tokyo-3, buffered and assisted by a computer system located aboard the larger of the two ships in orbit." Keel continued, as if he hadn't been interrupted. "We have acquired both a portion of this AI's code, as well as the assured assistance from someone within, to help us in taking the Tokyo-3 MAGI system intact. If we move quickly, we have a chance to turn their defenses against them."

There were a couple surprised murmurs from the monoliths as the news registered.

"Who is this insider?" SEELE 09 asked, speaking for the first time. He had been close to SEELE 05, and had witnessed his co-conspirator's ruin from without, as private information became public knowledge and the man had been hauled away for a lengthy prison term. He didn't think trusting anyone in Tokyo-3 was a good idea.

"It is of little concern to you," SEELE 10 replied, sharply.

Keel nodded in agreement. "Prepare your MAGI systems and Technical departments for an electronic attack on Tokyo-3. Once we've taken the city's defenses and computer, we'll be free to finally initiate the final step of our plan."

"And if they fail?" SEELE 11 asked softly.

"Then we try something else," SEELE 04 stated, before disconnecting, the monolith disappearing as the light above it shut off with an audible clunk.

The rest of the Monoliths began to disappear, one by one, until only Keel and the tenth remained.

"You are certain the insider will assist?" Keel asked levelly, concern evident in his voice. To the others he'd spoken as if it were a sure thing, but if they opened themselves and the Tokyo-3 MAGI managed to turn the attack back, they could lose a large portion of the initiative and power they had remaining.

"Trust me, she may not be conventional, but we can trust her," SEELE 10 stated, the predatory smile evident in his voice. He'd personally made contact with the insider, and knew they would assist in the digital takeover when the time came.

With that, the final two committee members disconnected, the empty room collapsing as the data maintaining it was deleted from the system as if it had never been there.

------

Back in Tokyo-3, after having the three Evangelion Units delivered to their original loading bay within NERV Headquarters, Dr. Akagi looked up at the restrained Unit-04, huge clamps, locks and restraints holding it upright as Kyle, in his angelic-form, crawled into the Entry Plug sticking out of its neck. "Remember," she called out, getting the distant figure's attention, "Rei and Shinji are standing by to intervene if you lose control."

Kyle blinked. "Was that supposed to reassure me?" she called back, before slipping into the seat and slapping the button that would close the large hatch.

The Entry Plug, an elongated-pill shaped container from which one piloted an Evangelion unit, had been engineered for extreme survivability in mind. Based on the escape pod design that had saved Misato Katsuragi's life from almost ground-zero at Second Impact, it was both rugged and compact, featuring a built-in life-support system as well as the interfacing system for the Evangelions. While they had all been modified and upgraded with Imperial-level technology, the size hadn't changed at all from their original design, and as such, they still felt cramped upon entry, the LCD Screens deactivated and the dim lighting helping to make the interior claustrophobic and dreary.

As the seals registered that the plug was now airtight, LCL was pumped into the plug, the breathable liquid quickly filling the interior, and Kyle took a final breath, before the level rose above her head and she exhaled, releasing the air in her lungs before she began breathing the pinkish fluid. Knowing it was the blood of Lilith, and not some manufactured chemical didn't help make breathing it any easier, and only the fact that she'd done this a dozen or so time before made it acceptable. That, and the knowledge that, if she puked now, she'd be breathing in her own vomit until they finished and cycled the LCL out later that afternoon.

In the control room, Dr. Akagi nodded. "Alright, the plug is ready. Insert it manually, and prepare for stage one connection."

Lieutenant Ibuki nodded. "Yes, ma'am!" After inputting the proper command, the Entry Plug spun into the Eva like a screw; the entire thing sinking into Unit-04's spine where it would normally assume control of the unit around it.

Inside the plug, one of the smaller screens came to life, the image blurry in the fluid. "Kyle, you've been inserted and we're about to begin... put your A-10 Nerve clips on," Ritsuko said, with a sigh.

"Yeah, yeah," the pilot mumbled, fumbling with the headband for a moment before setting them on her head. It was interesting to feel the tickle in the back of her head a moment before the plug around her went from underwater-blurry to totally clear.

Pulling the clips away for a moment, she watched the image clarity fade out, before setting them back in place and grinning as everything became clear again.

"Finished?" Dr. Akagi asked, scowling. She hadn't planned on this test, and knew that it was eating into her schedule. If Kyle were feeling antagonistic, then her day's plans were looking shot.

"Yeah, I just... think that's kind of neat," Kyle replied, gripping the butterfly handles before her and closing her eyes. "I can't feel much of anything. You must have shut it down _hard_," she stated, looking at the small screen with a quirked brow.

Despite the change in apparent sex and looks, the quirked brow was a decidedly Kyle-esque expression, and the doctor smiled slightly to herself as her first concern vanished. If Armisael managed to usurp the pilot's body, she'd have a hell of a time bringing the angel down. Now if everything went as well as the rather simplistic plug insertion had gone, she could get on with her daily schedule..

"Begin," she ordered, the technicians around her (mostly secondary crew) started bringing Unit-04 back online.

Inside the entry plug, Kyle waited, listening halfheartedly as the control room microphones picked up the numerous steps involved with bringing a questionable unit out of stasis. Finally, Dr. Akagi announced that they were preparing to reconnect the S2 engine and Micro-Fusion Reactor.

"Go for it," she mumbled, closing her eyes and waiting for whatever it might entail. After more than just a few skirmishes inside Unit-04, Kyle was used to most of the sensations that could be felt when sitting within the bulky biomechanical creation. In all her time as a pilot, however, they'd never taken Unit-04 so far offline, and as such, she wasn't quite sure what to expect, if anything.

As the last finger in the control room stroked the 'Activation' button on one of the many panels within, the interior of the Entry plug vanished, replaced by a decidedly familiar endless waist-deep sea of LCL.

"YOU!" A voice hissed, its familiar tone bringing a smile to Kyle's face. The smile grew as she looked around, and realized it was she who was standing on the surface of the LCL, Armisael waist-deep in the fluid ahead.

"Looking a little soggy there, Armisael," Kyle quipped.

"Is _this _why you've come? To taunt me?" the Angel asked, scowling.

"Not particularly, no. We were just testing Unit-04 for re-activation. You know, your prison? We want to make sure it can fight." Kyle smirked, hoping to eke a reaction out of the imprisoned Angel. Much to her displeasure, it didn't work as intended.

"My 'prison,' is it?" Kyle nodded once. "Then if you're the warden, you run a poor prison, traitor. When you leave here -crawl from within this abomination- I will again take control and proceed to destroy everything around me. Then, I shall wait for the next messenger to come and assist them in bringing about your end."

Kyle frowned. "Ahh, yeah... about that... any way we could maybe work out a deal where you _don't_ go nuts like that?" Not that she expected the Angel to agree so readily, but before pointing out the truth, she wanted to tease the imprisoned Angel's soul before getting to the point.

Armisael, meanwhile, stared wide-eyed at the figure before her, before laughing. "You come to me asking for help after imprisoning me here? You are as foolish as those you ally yourself with, traitor!"

"You keep calling me that... I don't think you understand just what you're dealing with," Kyle said finally, before looking around. "Is this your mind, or mine?"

"In this? We both have some control, though I cannot escape, while you may come and go freely," she stated, frowning. Apparently, Kyle assumed, she didn't like to lie, or couldn't. And Armisael didn't seem quite sure what to make of his prior statement, either.

"I need some hot water," Kyle asked, trying to imagine a cup of steaming water in her hand. Armisael, correctly believing such a request wasn't a threat, nodded, and a moment later, a cup appeared. "Hope this works," she said, before dumping the steaming cup on her head. While there was no feeling of shifting like he usually felt when hit with water, Kyle opened his eyes and looked down to see himself back in his birth form, the specially-designed plugsuit shifting and stretching to conform to his original shape. Armisael stared wide-eyed.

"This is my true form," he explained, smiling at her expression. "Despite what you may have thought, I'm no turncoat angel. Merely a cursed human."

"But.. you... we..." Armisael stuttered, before frowning, "and so, it would seem I'm truly imprisoned by the enemy. Fine then, human. You have defeated me." She stared down, sullenly, before jerking her eyes back up at him, "My being! What has happened to the piece of divinity I gave you... your... the other you?" she asked suddenly.

Kyle frowned. "Oh, _that_? It's stuck in my chest, where nobody is willing to take it out, and it apparently can't be targeted for removal by teleportation, despite its dimensions being readily quantifiable." His frown deepening, he sarcastically added, "_Thanks_, by the way."

Armisael scowled. "Of course you can't remove it, it's part of you... part of your _soul_, now; attached in a way that no human science can remove," she spat, looking almost disgusted.

"Why the sick face?" Kyle asked, before smirking. "You know if you puke here, you're going to have to... err... stand in it."

Armisael shuddered, before returning his gaze. "I gave up what I am to ruin you, thinking you were merely Fallen. Instead, I find I gave my being, my spark... my _Divinity_ to a human. A liar and a thief is what you are," Armisael stated, scowling, "and now you're Touched... it's hideous to contemplate."

"It's a curse. I have to pilot like that. If I tried in this form, I'd be torn from my body and stuck in the core, like you are now," Kyle stated, before frowning in thought. "You know, I wonder if I can pilot like this now, since the core isn't empty anymore," he mused, before shaking his head. "In any case, you gave it, and while I didn't openly accept, I didn't know how to turn it down, so this... _situation_... is all your doing," he finished, smiling down at the angry angel below.

She was shaking in anger now, and he prepared to catch her if she tried to tackle him, as he had done to her before. Finally, she spoke again, "your point is... taken."

Kyle grinned. "So you won't go berserk anymore?"

Armisael glared. "Shouldn't I? Even moreso now; you've taken _everything_ from me! If that is all I have, save this meaningless eternity," she waved a hand at the endless LCL around her, "then I will fight it, until I die, or some other alternative appears before me," she stated with finality.

Kyle's grin grew into a smile; finally. "Armisael... you almost sounded human, there." The Angel shuddered at that, and he shrugged. "Don't be so quick to dismiss all your options. Besides, I wouldn't be so quick to turn your back on us. While _we_ didn't intentionally lie, someone else set you up from the moment Sachiel first appeared, and you and all your siblings were headed right into their convoluted little trap."

"What do you mean?" Armisael demanded, her expression a mixture of grief and anger.

"Well..." Kyle began, intending to explain the truth about SEELE and Instrumentality to the Angel, when suddenly he felt himself- no, _her_self get pulled back from the mindscape and into the entry plug, where a quick glance showed the Unit being shut-down again. As her remaining senses returned to her, Kyle looked up in surprise, the numerous alarms ringing behind Ritsuko punching through the confusion and at least explaining why the conversation had been cut short.

"What's going on?" she asked, as the plug was ejected.

"We're under attack," Ritsuko said, before shouting at someone off screen to deactivate a connection. Turning to look at Kyle again, she elaborated. "They're targeting the MAGI. We've got to cancel this test and intercede before we lose everything." A moment later, the hatch to the plug popped open, before the LCL even had time to fully drain. A small torrent of the fluid poured out around the edges, spilling across the grilled catwalk and dropping away to the floor below with a loud splatter.

A few minutes prior, Ritsuko had been ready to cancel the test anyway, as the sensors had only briefly registered a synchrographic spike, moments before Kyle was reduced to a seemingly-catatonic state again.

"He's down again; what does the EKG show?" she asked, preparing to slap the big red button that would cancel the test.

"Her... _His_ brain is functioning as if she were awake and coherent," Ibuki replied as the display before her showed the information requested. "Unit-04 is showing signs of coherent thought too, though it's weak and intermittent." Turning to look at Dr. Akagi, she frowned. "The sensors might be bad."

Ritsuko shook her head. "No, we replaced all of them right before this test. This is something else."

"Could..." Maya paused, then looked at Ritsuko thoughtfully. "Do you think he's... she's... Kyle's talking to _it_ again?" she asked, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. In the small, quiet room, however, her attempt at privacy failed, and everyone who heard her question was left trying to make heads or tails of it. At least, those who hadn't been present at the earlier briefing.

"It's possible," the Doctor responded, after a couple second's thought. "If he is, I don't want to end this test just yet. Be prepared to run an emergency abort if the Unit shows signs of activating while he's still out."

"Abort?" the lieutenant asked, surprised at the severity of the order.

"Yes, he subdued the Angel once, but this time, it could be the other way around. We have no idea how to tell-"

Ritsuko was interrupted by a shout from a technician who was monitoring the MAGI systems off in the corner. Before she could turn and glare, however, the young man spoke up, "ma'am, connection to Matsushiro MAGI established."

The room was instantly abuzz with voices, and Ritsuko finally had to shout at them all to shut them up, "put it up on screen" she ordered, frowning. The main screen, set in the center of the wall to the front of the room and framed by two thick windows overlooking the testing chamber, flickered, its display changing from the interior of the Entry plug to a graphical representation of the Tokyo-3 Data network.

The previously darkened link leading out towards Matsushiro was indeed glowing, a connection active as the two MAGI systems initiated communications protocols. As she watched, a satellite link also activated, as did a standard T3 link to Tokyo-02.

The whispers around the room had just started speculating as to whether or not the blockade had ended when an alarm sounded, the link to the Matsushiro MAGI flashing red to indicate an incoming data attack.

"Oh, shit," Ritsuko muttered, as more links activated, while those already open began turning red as well.

"But... it's... it's too early!" Maya said, drawing some attention away from the paling doctor.

"End the test, eject the plug, and call the _Thunder_ for help from SHODAN and MAGI-Omega," she ordered, sending Maya and the few technicians not too busy staring hurrying to comply.

After explaining the situation to a visibly groggy Kyle (who quickly straightened up), she hurried from the room towards the bridge, Lieutenant Ibuki following as the technicians left in the minor control room were left to wonder what was going on.

The Level Two Bridge was abuzz with activity as Kyle made it there, not bothering to switch forms or shower the LCL from her form as the Imperial leader hurried to where she needed to be. When finally she emerged from a side-door, Kyle turned towards the main screen across from the bridge, behind the giant holographic map of the area, where it displayed just how many links were being used to digitally assault the city.

"The MAGI and SHODAN can't handle this?" Kyle asked with a frown. After all her posturing, SHODAN shouldn't have been having trouble with the inferior MAGI systems at the other sites, or the standard users attacking from wherever else they were.

"This assault is not so simplistic as we had been lead to believe," SHODAN's voice ground out, her face appearing on one of the side monitors. "These attackers are concentrating their MAGI systems on the MAGI system here, and the other attacks are apparently for me."

"You can't handle _contemporary_ attackers?" Kyle asked, incredulously.

"I can handle _those_ just fine. _These_, however, are using some of my own attack and defense algorithms against me. And they're adapting at a fairly impressive rate."

"Now where the fuck-" Kyle mumbled, spinning in preparation for an attack as someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Nabiki jumped back, the cup of hot water she was holding splashing onto her hand and making her scowl. "Relax. It's too early for that. SHODAN will show these prehistoric copycats what she can do, and we'll start preparing," she stated, before handing Kyle the cup and stepping back.

The display showed one of the smaller data-links go dead as SHODAN either shut down or destroyed the computer at the far end, and a moment later, two more went dark. Mild cheering started from one of the bridges below, but they stopped as the links re-activated.

"What the-" Lieutenant Ibuki mumbled, before rapidly typing away on the computer. She turned to Look at Dr. Akagi, who was also typing frantically, and called out "It's a mobile station on a wireless network connection. They have to be laptops or something similar," she said, her typing continuing unimpeded. "That's past the First Defense Line," she mumbled as she continued to type.

After a minute, she slammed a finger down on the enter key with a flare of finality, and a number of the smaller links died, the superior smirk on her face growing as the cheering from below returned, louder. And then, as if a switch had been flipped, the links were back up.

"Impossible!" she shouted, turning to her terminal. "I just shut down the Radio-LAN. We... I can't get back in! I'm locked out!" She said, her voice strained and rising. "Level-two access disabled," she announced after another futile attempt at re-entry.

"The MAGI turned it back on; they're in the system!" Ritsuko announced, her fingers flying over the board. "SHODAN, leave those amateurs alone, we've got a bigger problem!"

"How far are they?" Fuyutsuki called down, knowing the MAGI's defenses were not something easily brushed aside.

"First and Second Defensive Lines compromised, Third is failing now... they're going down a _lot_ faster than they should be," she stated in shock. Typing again, she continued, "Right Flank is being compromised as well, Left Flank is holding, for now. Final Defense Zones and Side-Barriers holding... again, for now."

The AI's image frowned, a rare sight, before some of the monitors around the room flickered, and lines of code began scrolling rapidly across the screen. "Good," the Doctor exclaimed a moment later, nodding at her screen before taking her lab coat off and tossing it on her chair. Standing suddenly, she spun and quickly made her way over to a large access panel set into the base of the central command tower.

"You're activating the 666 Firewall?" Nabiki asked, eyes wide. She'd assumed SHODAN and the MAGI could handle any digital incursions without relying on _that_ last resort.

"In any other instance, I'd be hesitant, but somehow they have a massive foothold in the MAGI already, and I can't allow them to get any deeper," the Doctor explained as she crawled into the hole. The tunnel was littered with old post-it notes and wires, and as the doctor disappeared within, the others present turned back to the screens around them, waiting for them to display the activation of the firewall.

"Is she in there?" Misato asked, the lift bringing her up to the level everyone had congregated on. Above them, on the smaller command deck, Fuyutsuki made his way to the edge where he could oversee operations.

"The Doctor's shutting them down now," Kyle said with a frown. "We're going to have to gear up quickly, this... is neither expected... or good," he elaborated, turning to Nabiki. "I want you to return to the _Thunder_, and coordinate things from up there with Makoto."

"Didn't she come down for the meeting?" she asked, with a frown.

"She's overseeing the.. err... now's not the time," he growled back, and she nodded.

"Rei and Shinji are standing by in their Eva's," Lieutenant Hyuga said, his screen flickering to show both pilots looking concerned from within their entry plugs.

"Have them move to launch positions and stand by," Fuyutsuki ordered from his perch. "I'll brief them from up here," he offered, moving back to the terminal on his desk.

"Misato, you and General Hongo set up most of the defenses, so you're going to have to coordinate them and bring our sensor net up to full power once Dr. Akagi stops this digital attack," Kyle said, any hostility exhibited earlier in the day gone as the situation unfolded around them.

"Are you _sure_ they're coming?" Ibuki asked, having turned in her seat to listen as orders were quickly handed out. "Couldn't this be a-" she paused for a moment, and Kyle jumped in, to finish what she might have said.

"-a mistake? No chance. This was the prelude to an assault, and things are about to get a whole lot worse." The conviction in his voice killed whatever retort she might have had, and she nodded numbly, realizing things were still spiraling out of control, despite everything they had done to improve their world from the original timeline.

"What should we do?" Hyuga asked, waving his hand at Aoba and Ibuki to indicate the primary bridge technicians.

Pausing in thought, Kyle turned to the three terminals they usually sat at, and frowned. "Once things come back up, I'll probably have you three transfer up to _The Nerve _and operate your positions by remote. If things in here get bad, you all can at least work unmolested, instead of dodging bullets... literally."

The three nodded, and Kyle turned to the tunnel Dr. Akagi had disappeared into. Before he could inquire as to how much longer she'd be, the screens around them flickered once, twice, and suddenly the lines of code froze, before going blank.

"I'm being discon-" SHODAN said, her sentence cutting off as she was apparently booted from the system.

"That's not good," Nabiki said, softly, before turning to the tunnel Dr. Akagi was crawling out of, her face pale.

"I can't activate the firewall. They... Melchior has been compromised," she explained, leaning against the wall.

"Melchior must have kicked SHODAN from the system," Ibuki said, glancing at the blank screens the AI had previously occupied.

"Contemporary Long Range Radar and Observation stations offline!" someone stated over the PA.

"That's past the Third Line.. this is impossible," Dr. Akagi shouted, turning to glare at the giant screen as if were lying.

Misato stepped forward and grabbed a discarded headset, not bothering with the earpiece and headband as she held the microphone up to her mouth. "Call them on the analogue landlines! Have them disconnect from the MAGI and re-route all data to their Imperial Counterparts, upload all telemetry and tracking data to the _Thunder_, and coordinate coverage with SHODAN," she called out, her voice sending dozens of technicians below running for the phones.

Turning her attention back to Kyle, she frowned. "We didn't cross-connect the Imperial structures to contemporary offensive encampments. Once those go dead, we'll be unable to bring them back up unless we manually run cables for tracking to them."

Nabiki frowned, "That's a fairly large oversight."

General Hongo spoke up then, stepping forward, "it was a joint decision. The loss of the MAGI was, at the time, inconceivable."

"It still is," Dr. Akagi growled, stepping over to a terminal and typing rapidly. While the rest of the bridge crew had been utterly locked out by now, she still knew more about the ins and outs of the system than the rest, and quickly gained enough access to at least monitor the situation within the MAGI. What she saw made her jaw drop.

"My god," she whispered, as more and more subsystems were hijacked.

"What is it?" Lieutenant Ibuki asked, having heard her surprising exclamation.

"Melchior wasn't compromised... it sold us out!" she explained. While Casper and Balthazar were actively fighting the takeover, Melchior was only putting up token resistance, and kept feeding garbage data to the other two, which caused them to lag in their defenses and lose more and more subsystems. The Final Defense Zone and Left Side Barriers were now beginning to fail.

"Can you stop it?" Misato asked, looking pissed. Bad enough that there were humans out there that wanted to end the world, but this computer- a computer they had entrusted with their lives- was now working to bring about their end? Misato growled at the thought.

Nabiki stepped back from the obviously pissed Major, before glancing at the tunnel Ritsuko had crawled out of. While everyone waited for the Doctor's response, she made her way to the door.

"I can't shut it down without the assistance off Caspar and Balthazar. And if they drop their focus on defense, they'll quickly be overrun," she explained, clenching her fist.

"Can you shut it down?" Kyle asked, frowning.

Ritsuko looked pained at that, before shaking her head, "It's not like a regular computer system. It was developed to run at all times... shutting it down will kill the system, and there will be no way to bring it back up."

"And you can't stop-" Kyle started to ask, before the image onscreen shifted again, and new alarms sounded. The few satellite links on screen were dwarfed now by a single, solid beam of light that connected to a new figure onscreen, a Star Destroyer.

"They're after _The Nerve_," Fuyutsuki said after a moments pause.

"Ritsuko, shut it off," Kyle ordered, his voice hard.

"I can't, it's not... there's no power switch. We'd have to physically destroy it," she said, her pained expression not loosening up. This was her mother's legacy they were talking about destroying, and she did not want to be a part of that.

"Then we'll have to destroy it," Nabiki said, holding up a white cylinder Kyle immediately recognized.

"What's that?" Misato asked, frowning. She'd been meaning to examine more of the weapons aboard the _Thunder_, but had been unable to, so she was just as clueless as the others.

"It's a Thermal Detonator," Kyle said, nodding. Unlike a conventional explosive, the Thermal Detonator would explode up to a certain range, utterly vaporizing anything within the blast radius, but not touching anything outside it.

"A grenade?" Fuyutsuki asked, frowning. While he assumed Nabiki knew how to handle it, it was still dangerous to wave around.

"Not quite," Kyle said, before glancing at the screen showing the incursion attempt against _The Nerve_. "But not now. That a 'trooper-issue?" He asked, though he was pretty sure it was. When she nodded, he turned to the Doctor.

"Are the cores in there?" He asked, pointing at the tunnel. She didn't respond, only staring at the opening, and he growled, "Dr. Akagi- Ritsuko!" calling her name drew her attention finally, and he spoke again, through clenched teeth, "I realize this is hard for you but it _has_ to be done. Are the cores in there?"

She nodded, before visibly pulling herself together. "Yes." She pulled on her lab coat, "the cores are inside." She turned to Nabiki, resigned to destroying her mother's final Legacy when suddenly a number of NERV Security forces and Stormtroopers rushed into the room, weapons drawn.

"Freeze! Hands in the air!" One of the NERV Security officers stated, while the Stormtroopers seemed to pause upon seeing Nabiki and I.

"What's the meaning of this?" Fuyutsuki shouted down at them, enraged.

"Sir?" one of the officers asked, frowning. "We received orders to detain everyone on the bridge for questioning. Someone sabotaged the MAGI."

"On who's orders?" He shot back, his scowl increasing.

"Yours, sir. They were sent from your desk."

"Oh, isn't this nice," Kyle groused, before turning to the Stormtrooper Captain. "What were your orders?"

"Lady Kino ordered us to detain you and Admiral Tendo on suspected psychological contamination. The order was relayed from the surface, sir."

He didn't sound convinced, and Kyle sighed. "Trooper, officer, the MAGI has been compromised, and sent those orders to prevent it's destruction."

"The orders were legitimate, sir," the trooper insisted.

"The Orders were falsified, and if we had time, I'd show you, but we've got about thirty seconds before SEELE takes total control of Tokyo-3's Administrative computer and wipes us all out," Dr. Akagi spat, before pointing at the access tunnel to the MAGI's core.

The Stormtroopers looked hesitant to trust her, but the NERV Security forces merely asked Fuyutsuki if he was rescinding his order.

"Of course I'm rescinding them! And ignore any further orders you receive digitally," he commanded, sending half the gun-wielding forces off the bridge.

"Trooper, as your Supreme Commander, I'm ordering you to stand down," Kyle said, finally.

"Our orders, Sir, are for your own safety, once we verify-"

Kyle saw red. "I did not ask for a bunch of mindless Stormtroopers when I made my wish. If you do not stand down right now, I swear to god I'll bisect you with an AT-Field so many times, your bodies will have the consistency of LCL before they manage to hit the floor," he hissed, switching back to English as his temper flared. The few around him capable of understanding him winced slightly at the mental image that threat brought up.

"Captain," Dr. Akagi said, softly, "as the leading expert in this entire _Universe_ on Angels and possible Angel Contamination, I give you my word Kyle and Nabiki are not being influenced. Furthermore-"

Whatever she was going to say died on her lips as the lights went out, the chamber illuminated now only by the multitude of screens still flashing their warnings.

"Next goes power and air," Ritsuko said, glaring in the dim light.

Kyle glanced at Nabiki, who returned his flat stare, then followed his gaze as it jumped to the Tunnel and the Thermal Detonator in her hand. Nodding slightly, she moved to toss it into the tunnel.

"Stun her, she's got a grenade!" One of the troopers suddenly shouted. Before she could throw the detonator, a batch of blue rings collided with Nabiki's chest, sending her sprawling to the floor. The detonator rolled under a chair, where it began beeping ominously.

"Oh shit," Kyle said, wishing suddenly that he had not accepted Nabiki's hot water. As everyone scrambled to get away from the beeping device, one person shoved her way past the others and dove at it, as the beeping grew higher in pitch.

Dr. Akagi knew she had to do it. And she had to do it now. "Bye, Mother," she said, as she threw the grenade at the looming tunnel, the opening now pitch black in the dim light of the various monitors.

There was a flash from within the tunnel, and the screens died as well, the only illumination now being the LEDs on the devices with battery backups, and there were surprised shouts from below as the technicians and staff who hadn't been forewarned lost what little light they'd had.

There was a moment of silence, before a muffled voice spoke out, "Lord Kyle, I've received updated orders. We-" the trooper paused, before speaking again, sounding almost terrified. "We were the victims of sabotaged communication lines. Our previous orders were not from Lady Kino."

"No shit," Kyle said, tonelessly. "You men are going to head straight to the surface and wait for me to contact you. You will do nothing, not even defend yourselves if attacked, until I give you new orders. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Lord Kyle," they chorused, sounding properly horrified.

Their fear and misery was exacerbated when Lieutenant Aoba muttered, "but we _are_ about to be attacked."

After a moment, when there was no noise to indicate they had moved, Kyle growled, "Well? Get going! Move! Move! Move!" As he shouted, the sounds of armored feet running out the door could be heard, and as they faded off in the distance, the rumble of diesel generators could be heard starting up somewhere below them.

Slowly, emergency lights began to flicker on, the pitch-black interior becoming only a murky darkness with semi-recognizable shapes moving around within. Most of those present reacted negatively as the dim red lights brought back memories of the attack in a hallway not to far from where they stood, and for a moment, it was uncomfortably quiet, before someone broke the silence.

"Alright, Maya, break out your laptop, we need to activate a couple independent systems and reroute everything we can't handle here to the ships in orbit," Ritsuko said, wiping her eyes. It had been hard, but she knew it had to be done, even if a part of her hated herself for it. Now all that was left was picking up the pieces.

"Yes ma'am... and... Doctor? I'm sorry for your loss," the lieutenant said, before slipping away.

"We all are, Ritsuko," Misato said, from nearby.

There was a murmur of agreements, before Fuyutsuki spoke up, "We need to get out of here and prepare for an assault on Tokyo-3. Doctor, you and your assistant shall stay here and help activate crucial systems. Lieutenants Hyuga and Aoba, from what I can tell, you're unable to work from here, so you should return to _The Nerve_ and help coordinate and monitor things from there." Most of what he had said, he knew, was re-iteration, but the group below seemed a little reassured, now that they had direct orders, and he knew that for some of them, a purpose would help keep the fear of what was coming at bay.

"You should go too, Fuyutsuki," Kyle said, looking around. "NERV is practically dead, and there's little to control from here, now. Start evacuating all non-essential staff, and get them to the shelters, along with the civilians in town. If.. no, _when_ this gets messy, we're going to need as few variables in the mix as possible."

"What should I do?" Misato asked, her shadowy figure clearly agitated, with her hands on her hips and her foot tapping the darkened floor impatiently.

"You and General Hongo need to head to the surface to coordinate defenses," Ritsuko replied curtly.

"We can use the deployed Garrison as a base of operations," the General said, before turning towards the door.

Misato turned to follow, before pausing. 'What about you?"

Kyle turned towards her, and shrugged before making his way to a cupboard beside a dead terminal and rummaging around for a first-aid kit. "I'm going to see to Nabiki here," he explained, pulling out a vial of smelling salts, "then," he paused, leaning down and cracking it open under her nose, causing the Admiral to start awake. Patting her on the shoulder, he turned back to Misato and grinned nastily. "Then, I'm getting back in Unit-04."

"But you can't! Rei and Shinji are in the Launch Bay, and we'll be launching them soon. Half the controls needed to safely reconnect you are disabled for good, and until we can get to _The Nerve_ and take over, Unit-04 is- is..." she trailed off, scouring her mind for the best way to describe it.

"Is?" Kyle prompted, as Nabiki climbed to her feet somewhat shakily.

"It's more than just a liability!" Ritsuko exclaimed. "It's too dangerous!"

"I understand the risks, Akagi, but at the moment, the imminent destruction of all life on Earth is a bit more pressing. Get Unit-04 powered up, and I'll take care of the rest... even if I have to strangle that angel to get her to cooperate," Kyle growled, stepping over to a water fountain and splashing himself.

"She's _that_ reluctant to fight?" Ibuki asked, surprised.

"No, she wants to fight me, and she's kind of sad that she put her core in me, knowing I'm human now, but I doubt she'd willingly help us, unless I finish the conversation I was interrupted in the middle of," he explained, before pulling Nabiki aside.

While still apparently woozy from the stunner blast, she seemed coherent enough to understand what was going on. "Head down to storage room 11B and get the football," Kyle whispered to her. While she hadn't taken a job in NERV like he had, she still knew most of its secrets, and the football was one of the largest NERV still had. Much like the football in the American Government, this was a briefcase. Unlike its American counterpart, however, this one held Adam, returned to his cryogenic storage container after being surgically removed from Gendo Ikari's hand.

"Take it to the surface, and get to the _Thunder_ with it ASAP. If Kaworu is coming, and there's no reason to believe he isn't, then at least Adam will be out of his reach," she finished, before stepping back over to the others, who had continued ahead.

Nabiki slipped away unnoticed in the dark, and Kyle turned to General Hongo a minute later. "General, order all troopers within the structure to begin evacuating all non-combat personnel. Also, have a squad find Admiral Tendo and escort her until she is safe aboard the _Thunder_."

"Yes, my Lord," she relied, pulling a commlink from a belt pouch and speaking quietly into it. "And sir?" she asked, gaining Kyle's attention again. "I'm sorry for those troopers' lack of faith. It won't happen again."

Kyle looked at her for a moment, before nodding. "See that it doesn't. Dismissed, General." With that, the General made her way to the forefront of the group, putting some distance between herself and her superior.

"Where's Nabiki?" Misato asked finally, realizing belatedly that the Admiral was no longer with them.

"She's running ahead," Kyle replied, being intentionally vague. Misato was about to demand more, but he suddenly turned down a side hall, Ritsuko and Maya following. When she turned to follow as well, General Hongo spoke up, "Our destination is not theirs, Major." Misato frowned, but turned to continue to the elevators ahead.

"This is a very bad idea," Ritsuko stated a few minutes later, as she glanced over the darkened control panel. Nearby, Kyle was climbing into the exposed entry plug, while Maya was across the room, sitting on the floor while she pounded away on a laptop connected to a data port nearby.

There was a loud, metallic clang as the big clamps restraining Unit-04 disengaged, and a moment later, the huge doors leading to the launch bay began to grind open.

"Got it," she shouted, closing the laptop and pulling the plug from the wall before stuffing the package under her arm and making her way back over to Kyle and Ritsuko.

"You'll find that a lot of seemingly bad ideas are actually good ideas... from a certain point of view," Kyle replied finally, collapsing into the entry plugs chair after squeezing in through the cracked-open main hatch.

"From a certain point of view?" the doctor asked with a frown that was invisible in the darkened room.

"Now's not the time for movie quotes," Kyle replied, slapping the button that would close the plug the rest of the way.

"Irrelevant idiot," Dr. Akagi grumbled, before pulling a lever that would flood the plug with LCL. When the little status light turned green, she pulled down the much larger lever that would activate the hydraulic plug insertion system, before turning to go. Without the MAGI, the automated systems that would allow her to do everything with the push of a button lay dead, potentially forever.

Originally, what she had just done had also been impossible, but after the power outage during Matariel's assault, tertiary mechanical systems had been installed wherever the Evas were likely to be stored, to avoid having to summon potential security leaks into high-security areas to assist with the manual preparations. The lever and battery-operated systems they'd installed were now the only truly reliable systems they had, with the loss of the MAGI.

Staring at the darkened, menacing form of Unit-04 for a moment in an attempt to organize her thoughts, Ritsuko Akagi sighed, before turning to look at a waiting Lieutenant Ibuki. "Let's go. We've got to re-activate the S2 engine without help of the MAGI, and then activate the launch system, sound the Angel Alarm, and manage the Security Systems here and abroad..." she trailed off, frowning, before sighing. "And I thought today's original schedule was bad."

"At least we know what to expect. When this is over, we should be able to move on with our lives... we'll have won," Ibuki said, looking on the bright side. Ritsuko wasn't too sure about that, but as she and Maya worked in the darkened control room, she felt that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out different, and it would all work out. Snorting softly at her own idealism, she began manipulating the system into working without the MAGI.

Kyle was annoyed. While the plug had internal lighting that currently beat the pitch-black interior of NERV, at the moment she was helpless, waiting for Ritsuko to activate the Evangelion she waited within so she could help turn back the attack they all knew was coming.

Without the relay systems, and this deep within the geo-front, the radio was useless, so anything could be going on outside. Trying not to think about it didn't help, so instead, she mentally went over what she knew had originally happened next.

SEELE, after losing the fight for the MAGI system, had sent its military forces in: a combined assault on air and land. Tanks, Hovercraft, and soldiers were their primary forces, and only later did the Mass-Production Evangelion units arrive, being defeated by Asuka, before reactivating and destroying Unit-02.

Kyle winced at that thought. No, she decided, this time things would be different. They'd be facing Imperial units and three Evangelions, and none of them would lose power like Unit-02 had. Not with the modifications Ritsuko and Lieutenant Commander Cantrall had installed.

The timing was also altered, this assault moved forward to just after the battle with Armisael, instead of Tabris.

"Tabris..." Kyle mumbled, realizing there might be more than just Mass Production Eva's to be wary of.

"You know the final messenger?"

Kyle jumped, surprised to find himself once more within the mind of Unit-04. Or the shared mind, if what Armisael had previously stated was true.

"He's... umm... coming. I think. At the head of a hefty-sized army."

"Tabris is not one to lead, and there are none who would... do you mean _humans_?" She asked, shock evident on her face.

"Yeah." Kyle shrugged. "Tabris is Kaworu, the fifth Evangelion Pilot. Originally, he was supposed to come close to causing Third Impact before asking Shinji to kill him when he realized he was set up. This time, though..."

"You speak as if all this has already happened," the angel stated, confusion evident in her voice. Then she frowned. "And before you were torn from here, you insinuated that my siblings and I had been fooled."

Kyle nodded. "Yeah, the truth is, when Adam caused Second Impact, a recovery team captured him and froze him in his embryonic form and only recently brought him here. What you and the others would have found, if you had made it to Central Dogma, would have been Lilith, which would instigate Instrumentality. Not the Third Impact you all seem so dead-set on causing."

Armisael's jaw dropped open.

"It's true," Kyle continued, not bothering to pause and enjoy her incredulity, "SEELE actually caused Second Impact, and manipulated everything that's happened behind the scenes in order to bring about Instrumentality."

"And Tabris?" the angel asked, when she could finally speak again.

"Tabris is like Rei, a hybrid of Human and Angel that SEELE coerced into coming here. He knows what he is, though, and he thinks he's going to find Adam and be reunited."

"No! We have to stop him!" Armisael shouted.

Kyle's grin grew predatory. "'_We_' have to stop him?" He asked, smirking down at the Angel in the LCL.

"You... if what you say is true, then he _has_ to be stopped," Armisael stated finally.

"Then you'll help me? Work with me?" Kyle asked, his mirth disappearing as he stared at the angel inquisitively.

"If you'll give me your word that what you say is true..." Armisael began, her head bowed as she stared at the surface of the LCL.

"You have it," Kyle replied, nodding.

"Then you have mine that I will work with you to stop Tabris," the angel finished, turning her face up to look at Kyle without the expression of hatred, disgust, or arrogance she so typically wore.

Kyle nodded, before pausing. "Tabris is being escorted by an army. He will not be alone, and we will not make it to him uncontested."

Armisael scowled. "The humans that get in our way have only themselves to blame; foolishness in their eternal arrogance," she growled.

"Chill, Armi. Remember: I'm human, too," Kyle pointed out, before holding out a hand to the Angel.

"'Armi?'" Armisael asked, looking momentarily confused.

Kyle shook her head dismissively. "Forget it. Do we have a deal?"

Those last five words were spoken flatly, and more quietly than usual, but despite that, in the infinitely expanse of Unit-04's mindscape, they seemed to echo ominously.

Armisael glanced around once at the reddish expanse around her, noticing the ripples in the water had grown into little waves, and she could actually feel small currents pulling at her robe. Looking up at the proffered hand, and the confusing human behind it, a brief flash of trepidation crossed her face, before she set her jaw and reached out to take it.

As their fingers drew close, there was a rumble in the distance, like thunder, and the LCL began to twist and roll, real waves appearing in the distance. When both hands clasped the other, there was a crack, like the universe itself had just broken in half, and the sea of LCL exploded upward, the only calm area as far as the mind could see a small 6-foot circle in which the two stood.

With a tug, Kyle pulled Armisael's figure out of the LCL, and the Angel set foot on the invisible surface keeping both above the fluid. And suddenly, Kyle was back in the Entry plug.

"-get out of here and hope for the best!" Kyle heard Ritsuko shout, the Entry plug alight as every system was activated and powered up.

"Oh... my... GOD..." Kyle said with awe, as she felt herself connecting with Unit-04 in a way that made all previous attempts seem like a fumbling man in the dark.

There was no video connection with the Doctor, but apparently an audio connection was active. "Kyle?" she asked, sounding very surprised to hear him. Moments ago, Unit-04's eyes had flashed, and suddenly the active sensors around NERV had started going crazy.

"I'm here, Ritsuko," the pilot replied, sounding somewhat pre-occupied.

"Doctor, his synch ratio is fluctuating around 150," Maya hissed, turning her laptop so that Ritsuko could see the screen.

"Did you... convince Armisael?" the doctor asked, warily, unsure what to make of what she could see on Ibuki's screen. The Sine wave Kyle's piloting typically produced was gone, the steady line in its place reminding her of the reports of Kaworu, and his ability to Synch at whatever level he wanted.

"We did. It's a temporary truce... but_ holy shit,_ if you could be here..." Kyle said, closing her eyes and letting the Eva's senses fill in for them. Smiling despite herself, she willed the Evangelion to head towards the Launch bay, awed at the ease with which it complied.

"I'm glad," Ritsuko replied, her voice conveying a large portion of her relief. "You just about shook this entire sector to pieces when your forcibly re-activated Unit-04... and you're still pumping out enough power to light up a small city."

"Sorry," Kyle replied, though he didn't sound sorry at all.

"Whatever. Try to rein it in until we can launch you to the surface. It's not electricity, but some of the systems in the control room started giving anomalous readings when you started up. Save it for SEELE," she ordered. In his apparently shocked state at the clarity of the mental connection to Unit-04, she assumed she could get away with ordering him around, if she were careful not to make it too obvious. Frowning, she wished idly that the MAGI were running; the multitude of sensors and analyzing algorithms would have definitely helped her to understand what had happened.

"On my way," Kyle replied, as Unit-04 made its way through the darkened interior of NERV, uninhibited and unhindered. On the way, Kyle finally came down from the almost euphoric high the synchronization was giving her and asked, "How are you talking to me?"

"One of your Stormtroopers came by and gave the Lieutenant and me a commlink," Ritsuko replied.

Glancing down, Kyle blinked in surprise. She was right, the radio was still dead. Instead, its Imperial counterpart, which had been disabled earlier, was now active, and receiving a number of held communications from both nearby and orbit.

"Commander?" Shinji's voice responded, sounding surprised. He'd been in Unit-01 for almost an hour and a half now, and had been falling asleep when the new voice had come out of the commlink. He'd spoken to Rei for a little bit, but that conversation had felt forced, and after being sent here by Commander Fuyutsuki, all he'd had to do was wait and speculate.

So it was a surprise when he heard Kyle's voice coming from the speakers. Keying up a video-link, he was even more surprised to see the Imperial Leader back inside an apparently functional Unit-04. He had assumed the Eva was out of commission, and had expected to be connected to the bridge.

Kyle glanced up at the new window as it opened, and nodded to Shinji with a smile before closing it back down. He didn't mean to be rude, but at the moment, they didn't really have time to chat, and if things went as planned, all three Units would be topside soon enough, anyway.

"It is good to see you've regained control of Unit-04," Rei stated a moment later, not bothering to open a video link.

"Good to be back in the driver's seat," the pilot replied glibly, before turning her attention back to Dr. Akagi, who was speaking on the Command Channel.

"How long was I out?" she asked, before looking at the list of various callers and available channels. While some were broad-channel communications between Stormtroopers, there was a data-link to _The Nerve_ that was currently deactivated, and an incoming transmission from _Jupiter's Thunder_.

As she activated the data-link, Dr. Akagi responded, "You were out for about a half hour, this time. It started much like before, but then everything seemed to die down, and we were about to pull the plug, when the energy sensors started redlining."

"Oh," Kyle replied, as the uplink was established. The few screens that had remained blank suddenly came to life, as telemetry and radar tracking from orbit was delivered to the systems aboard. The channel reserved for the Pilots and the bridge which Shinji had called him on a minute ago lay open, and Kyle left it that way, before shutting off the private channel to the bridge. Finally, the Communications system was acceptably configured.

Now all he had to do was re-configure all the other systems that had been reset to their default settings when the Eva had been shut down. Knowing MAGI-Omega was monitoring the data feed, Kyle ignored the systems transmitting data about him and Unit-04, and activated external telemetry feeds. Tokyo-3 popped into existence on the screen, and she smirked as she realized the myriad stations had listened to Misato and were now uploading all their data to _The Nerve _where it was processed before being sent back down to Unit-04. There was a blurry patch to the south of Tokyo-3, however, and as she watched, it crept east and northward, beginning to encircle the city. "We're being jammed?" She asked when she realized what it was.

"That just started about two minutes ago. I think it's safe to guess what's coming next," a new voice cut in, and a second later Nabiki appeared, looking somewhat more awake than the last time Kyle had seen her. Behind the Admiral was the Bridge of the _Jupiter's Thunder_. Apparently Nabiki had made it aboard safely.

As Unit-04 entered the Launch bay, hundreds of figures could be seen running around, the entire room lit up by numerous floodlights that had been dragged in to ensure that nobody wandered into a no-pedestrian zone. Aside from the dangers posed by the Evangelions, there were literally dozens of AT-STs parked on the far side of the room, and as she watched, Kyle saw a pair of the two-legged vehicles step out of the formation against the wall and make their way towards the catapults at the back of the room, where all the catapults but three were occupied; if not by Units -00 and -01, then by a Scout Transport, each of which had a jury-rigged brace to keep it from collapsing on its trip to the surface.

"I can't say much about Imperial Forces down there, but we're getting prepared up here," Nabiki stated, drawing Kyle's attention back to the interior of the Entry Plug; before the Admiral could say anything else, however, a worried-looking Makoto Kino gently but firmly pushed the Tendo aside, to take her place onscreen.

"Hey Mako-chan," Kyle said softly, smiling at her through the communications link. Despite everything that had happened so far that day, just seeing her helped make things a little better, and from the relieved expression on her face, it was readily apparent she felt the same way.

"Hey, Kyle," she replied, her reprimand dying on her lips as she heard his heartfelt greeting. "How're you doing?"

Kyle sighed, glancing outside Unit-04 before stepping onto the remaining Eva Catapult. "It's been a busy day at the office," she quipped finally. On one of the interactive displays, he quickly indicated which exit she wanted the Eva to emerge from, before frowning when nothing happened. After a moment, however, the catapult backed up to the wall, the clamps set into the rail locking the Evangelion in place before launching all three Units to the surface.

"It's not over yet," Nabiki said, a new window opening to display her face, currently frowning as she looked at something before her. "That jamming field is still spreading, and Omega and SHODAN think it's going to encircle Tokyo-3. Contemporary Radar systems will be useless with that up, and even our Imperial systems will be somewhat affected."

Kyle sighed dramatically as Unit-04 finally emerged from the ground, the Unit's built-in Radar finally getting sensible returns. Glancing at the clear blue skies above Tokyo-3, the transformed human looked at his wife on screen, and gave her another quick smile. "Looks like I have to get back to work. Take care of things up there for me."

Makoto wanted to say more, but looking around at the officers on the bridge preparing for a full scale attack, she knew now was not the time. "Give 'em hell," she said, smiling back.

"No less than they deserve for trying to cause it," Kyle replied, scowling at the horizon for a couple seconds. Turning back to the image of his wife, she shrugged, before winking. "I love you, Makoto. Stay safe."

Makoto, aboard the _Jupiter's Thunder_, the ship he had named for her, smiled softly, before replying, "I love you too. _Thunder_ out." As the transmission was terminated, Makoto summoned her henshin stick, before turning to the crew. "All right, everyone... It's about time for the battle to begin. We might not have to worry about being attacked up here, but that's no reason to be lazy. Signal all personnel to battle stations and bring the shields up to full. It's time to end the threat to this world once and for all."

As she spoke, the Officers around her straightened their statures and moved to comply with all the decorum they could muster. Lady Kino may have appeared as nothing more than an out-of-her-league college student when she wanted to, but right now, she was their commanding officer, and as they hastened to obey, the men and women serving under her and Lord Kyle mentally renewed their oaths to fight to the death to protect their leaders.

END PART 1

------

Author's notes:

Wow, a little late, aren't I? Sorry about that. I have the second half outlined, but I'm still writing it, so expect another lengthy pause before I finish it. Hopefully this half was good enough to satiate everyone until I can get it out. While switching to Third Person had been my initial intention for both halves, sadly, my first attempt at writing the second half as such was so full of random information that it read almost like an instruction manual. While I still intend to use everything I planned, I'm going to have to revert to First-Person Perspective to avoid some of the hang-ups I kept hitting in my first attempt.

Once more, I'd like to thank my pre-readers for their diligent perusal of this half in all it's iterations, and without whom I'm sure you all would have had to force your way past some pretty horrible sentences...

Just one more upload to go, and I'm finally done with Eva.


	2. Part 2

"It would appear they've decided to deny _anyone_ the use of Tokyo-3's MAGI system," SEELE 04 intoned.

"Field Reports indicate the loss has compromised only a portion of their radar coverage," SEELE 06 replied, his tone conveying his displeasure.

"More disturbing is the fact that they have a second MAGI system in orbit where we cannot reach," SEELE 07 stated.

"We cannot order the Seventeenth in with those ships in position. We've all seen what damage they can do, and we've received word that they've held back their most powerful weapons, too," SEELE 11 proclaimed, his nasally voice turning it into more of a whine than he'd intended.

"The threat posed by the orbital ships will be remedied shortly. At that point, we'll order our forces in to clear the path for the Seventeenth to proceed." Keel's voice cut through the shadowy chamber with definite finality, and it took a moment for those gathered to voice their opinions after that.

"What do you intend to do?" SEELE 09 asked.

"That is not your concern. Preparations have been made to deal with just such a situation." SEELE 10 stated.

"Like your spy?" Asked SEELE 11, the question mocking.

"Enough! You all have your parts to play in the hours ahead. When next we speak, it should be as one all-powerful being," Keel ordered. There was silence in the chamber for a moment, before the Monoliths began fading, one-by-one. Finally, all that remained was SEELE 10 and Keel.

"Do you think they suspect we're coming?" SEELE 10 asked, quietly.

"You've seen the documents; despite attempts to avoid it, we've followed the 'plot' enough that even the Third Children should expect it. Begin your attack," Keel stated, his voice sounding weary for the first time.

"Are you sure what we... what _I_-- am about to do will be reversible?"

"If all goes as planned, not only will that and more be within our power, we'll hardly have cause to care."

"Understood." SEELE 10's monolith disappeared then, and Keel, alone now in the digital chamber he'd spent far too many hours in, took one last look at the black expanse around his digitized desk, before disconnecting for the last time.

------

"Lady Kino?" an officer called from the Combat Information Center. "We've got incoming from the north, multiple contacts inbound for Tokyo-3."

Makoto Kino turned to look at the officer for a moment, before moving over to the holographic map nearby. "Do we know what they are?" she asked.

"They're just about to reach the jamming zone surrounding the city, but SHODAN has them identified by their IFF Transponders. Looks like a mix a UN and JSSDF Aircraft. Air Superiority Fighters."

Kyle, who'd been listening in via an open communications channel, spoke up then, "what types of fighters?"

The officer glanced at the information on his screen before reading it off, "two US-made F-22 Air Superiority Fighters, two UN F-35 Strike Fighters, and a Japanese F-2."

"Beautiful," the Imperial Commander complained, while Admiral Yuki gave the order to launch TIEs.

"Ma'am!" A different officer called, his voice more urgent, "we have incoming!"

There was a rumble as everyone who had heard the exclamation declared the impossibility of anything assaulting them outside of the atmosphere.

"What is it," Makoto asked, frowning. The shields were up, but they hadn't expected anything to attack, so there was the off-chance they were facing something that might be able to circumvent them, however unlikely the possibility.

"Too fast to be manned without inertial dampers... Flight path looks primarily ballistic. Telemetry puts their launch point at somewhere in central Asia, the Qinghai Province of China."

There was silence on the bridge as that registered. "Where will it come down," Fuyutsuki asked, finally.

"Looks like the south central Pacific."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ritsuko mumbled, as she tried to get the hang of the differences between the original MAGI system and MAGI-Omega.

"Does this help?" SHODAN asked, overriding every screen to show that the projectile would pass directly between Tokyo-3 and _The Nerve_.

"They wouldn't!" Ritsuko hissed, a moment before another officer spoke up, his voice grim, "Radiometrics confirms it. The payload is hot."

"That's insane! At this altitude, they'll bring down every unshielded electronic device from Miyagi to Hyogo!"

"How long until it passes overhead?" Kyle asked.

"Twenty seconds, Milord."

Kyle winced, "SHODAN, what will this cost us?"

"Radio communications, contemporary systems attached to unshielded cables, and most of the civilian systems," the AI responded quickly.

"We can live with that. Everyone get ready for it," the Imperial Commander stated, as the officer quietly counted down.

As the countdown hit zero, the Chinese DF-41 ICBM passing directly over Tokyo-3 detonated, its pre-programmed targeting data indicating it had reached its destination, and the one megaton warhead in the missile's nose cone flashed before releasing its destructive nuclear power.

In the warships above the blast, multiple systems monitoring local space registered the sudden spike of Electromagnetic interference, and certain systems were shut down to prevent them from taking damage. The most important system hit, however, was both unexpected and unwelcome.

"Teleporters are down!" A young Lieutenant stated, as the flash outside died down. The Polarized Transparisteel panels had darkened immediately in response, but the glow from outside had still briefly illuminated the interior of the bridge.

In Tokyo-3, all three Evas stopped moving and turned to look up at the flash, the upper-atmospheric burst shining in the sky like a second sun. Much like the windows above, the panels displaying the world around each Eva darkened as external sensors responded to the sudden influx of light.

While most of the Imperial Systems were either shielded or operating on a technological level that rendered the blast harmless, thousands of miles of unshielded cable and tons of contemporary electronics weren't so lucky, and all over Tokyo-3, Power transformers exploded in showers of sparks, while unhardened electronics sputtered and died; the more sensitive devices smoking as delicate components were literally fried by the Electromagnetic Pulse.

"What was that?" Shinji cried, looking over at a nearby transformer that had just exploded in sparks.

"A nuclear explosion," Rei explained, as she set Unit-01 back on its course.

Further away, outside the jamming perimeter established by the Joint UN/JSSDF taskforce, the Theater Commander glanced up at the fading fireball above, and nodded grimly.

"There's our go-signal. Engage."

At those words, the shout went out, shielded field radios configured to talk through the seemingly-random jamming giving the order to hundreds of hidden Units that had painstakingly crossed Japan over the past weeks in preparation of this one attack.

"Time to take back our future," the General said, before turning to the person beside him. "We'll send you in once we've cleared a path."

The figure, a grey-haired, red-eyed child, didn't respond, merely humming quietly to himself as he watched a column of M1A2's go by.

"Outer Decoys are being painted... taking fire!" an Imperial Captain shouted, alerting everyone in the deployed garrison that the fight had officially started.

To the east, where the outermost buildings and defensive-looking structures were being systematically destroyed by explosive fire from a number of mobile howitzers, a steady rumble picked up, growing to a roar as a squadron of low-flying jet fighters flew by in an inverted-V formation.

While their radios were still full of static from the dissipating EMP, the Squadron Leader waved instructions to the other pilots from within the cockpit, and the group of jets turned south, the F-22s and -35s opening up their internal munitions bay to expose a number of GBU-39s, small-yet-powerful bombs that the planes began dropping on pre-designated targets.

"Bombing in Sector 5!"

"C-Flight is responsible for that sector. Divert them from their patrol and bring up the AA systems," General Hongo replied, looking over the tactical map and silently cursing the jamming field that let jet-based fighters get within their airspace.

"Yes, ma'am!" Someone replied, and a moment later the map showed a trio of TIE-Defenders deviating from their patrol pattern and heading towards the location of the bombings.

Outside, the bombs had managed to hit most of what the pilots had been aiming for, and the Squadron cheered as behind them, one of the skyscrapers fell into the ground, a huge rectangular hole left in its place.

"Incoming bogeys!" One of the Pilots shouted, the reflex ingrained despite the lack of radio communications. Behind and to the left, his radar showed a trio of ships coming in fast, the IFF-less craft not registering in his fighter's identification systems.

"This is C-Flight Lead, break and engage," the Leader of the Trio of TIE-Defenders stated, his communications system untouched by the EMP.

"C-2, Understood."

"C-4, Roger."

The two other TIEs broke off and accelerated, C-4 coming up behind the Mitsubishi F-2, while C-2 dropped into place behind one of the F-22s.

The aircraft broke as well, the two F-35s climbing for more altitude so they had more choices for maneuverability, while the F-22s slowed and dove, trying to lose their pursuers in between the skyscrapers. The sole F-2 in this flight pulled up to get a little height, before turning hard, bleeding off speed and sharpening the turn with a quick application of the fighter's airbrake.

C-4 smirked at the maneuver, impressed the dated-looking single-engine fighter could turn so sharply. It wasn't enough to lose the nimble TIE, however. The Space Superiority Fighter flared its starboard engines, throwing the craft into a hard left, before it shot off to stay on the tail of the F-2. Lining up for a shot before the F-2 could finish straightening out after its hard maneuver, C-4 fired, the green-tinted blasts of energy reaching out towards the enemy fighter.

"Shit," the pilot of the F-2 said, as a green lance of energy flashed by his cockpit on the left. A moment later there was a massive jarring sensation, and his cockpit went dead around him, the world outside spinning wildly. Knowing there was little time left, he reached for the ejection handle, hoping the seat wouldn't throw him into a building or the ground. Unfortunately, before he could pull the yellow handle, a second laser blast bisected the cockpit, vaporizing the remaining front end of the fighter.

"One down," C-4 intoned emotionlessly, before climbing after one of the running F-35s.

C-2 watched his target drop down and fly a mere 10 meters off the city's deserted streets. "C-2 to Command; can you retract all non-vital buildings?"

"Negative C-2, that blast destroyed most of the locking systems. The city's days of rising with the sun are over," someone replied.

C-2 grumbled an affirmative, before dropping his fighter in behind the fleeing F-22. As the two planes took off down the city streets, C-2 opened fire, the green blasts missing and blowing out a number of windows on a skyscraper. Ahead, the F-22 Pilot spotted a park- and the end of the buildings providing cover- and prepared to pull up hard, activating his afterburners and climbing for the sky.

C-2, prepared for the run for maneuvering room, modified his trajectory, and fired when the F-22 had cleared the last building. Before the Jet Fighter's Pilot could react, the energy blast passed above the jet, and the second shot impacted squarely with the body of the plane, setting off its fuel in a fireball that C-2 happily flew through.

"Strike one bandit," He cried out, before turning his attention to the radar. The other F-22 had bailed and was running, and he turned to intercept and destroy it when his Radar warning receiver went off, the audible alert punctuated by a flashing indicator on his HUD.

Behind him, the F-35 pilot smirked as he released an externally mounted AIM-120 AMRAAM, the missile streaking away to intercept the bizarre-looking craft ahead. The TIE began to turn, its maneuverability impressive, but at the range they'd been, there was little time, and the missile exploded, the warhead delivering a jet of superheated gasses ahead and into the target.

"Yes!" The F-35 pilot declared as the craft ahead disappeared within the black and orange fireball. His enthusiasm, however, died as quickly as it had appeared when the target emerged from the blast apparently unscathed, a thin blue spherical field around it shimmering once more before disappearing.

C-2's TIE was jarred harshly from the blast, the fighter's shields surprisingly damaged by the shaped-charge, and it took a second for him to regain control and realign on the fleeing F-22. Before the enemy behind him could fire again, he hit his craft's afterburners, rapidly putting distance between him and the F-35 behind him.

The F-35 pilot growled as the enemy craft suddenly accelerated at a rate nothing manned on Earth could mimic. Activating his own afterburners, the Strike Fighter accelerated again, when suddenly a green blast of charged plasma impacted his fighter from behind, C-Flight Leader taking out his second F-35, and accelerating to join C-2 in taking out the last F-22.

------

"Another ballistic incoming!"

"What?" Ritsuko cried, turning to the screen keeping _The Nerve_ in contact with _Jupiter's Thunder_ and Imperial forces below.

"Another from China?" Fuyutsuki asked, looking down from his seat at the top of the Bridge.

"Yes, sir."

"Will it pass above Tokyo-3 like the last one?" Makoto asked from the bridge of the _Thunder_.

"Yes, Lady Kino. It'll reach us in another minute."

"Damn... and the airways were just beginning to clear," Ritsuko growled.

"More incoming craft detected," another voice added.

"Ground-based sensors registering a large number of vehicles approaching Tokyo-3 from the west and north," another voice piped in.

"Deploying AT-STs and AT-PSs. Activating AT-ATs," General Hongo stated, nodding to a nearby Major to call up the indicated forces and start sending them out to engage.

"Three, two, one..."

As before, the missile exploded as it passed over Tokyo-3, the ICBM having carried its nuclear warhead to the designated destination, where it exploded with the force of a million tons of TNT.

------

Once again, the sky flared, and the few messages being sent over the slowly-clearing airwaves were drowned out by another burst of static, and what few devices hadn't been fully destroyed by the blast sizzled as the energy again ravaged anything unshielded in the area.

The final F-22, passing into the jamming zone, released a flurry of white phosphorous flares to signify that its squad had completed its designated task. Below, in one of the many mobile jamming stations, an intelligence officer spotted the flares and smirked before using a tight-beam laser communication system to let his superiors know that step one had been completed.

A moment later, there was a distinctly alien whine, and suddenly a trio of bizarre, three-winged craft emerged from over the trees, two continuing on after the fleeing F-22, while the third rose and wheeled around before strafing the area. As the green blasts began raining down around him, the Intelligence officer had only a moment to hope his message made it before the world exploded around him.

------

"Mobile Jamming emitter destroyed," C-4 stated, before accelerating to catch up to the other two Defenders in his Flight.

"Good job," C-Flight Lead stated, before turning to look at the updated orders scrolling by on one of the many displays within the TIE-Defender's cockpit. "Flight, break off and return to our designated patrol path, we've got multiple incoming."

The other two pilots acknowledged and quickly reoriented their craft towards Tokyo-3.

As they passed over a relatively nondescript-looking building which rose over the nearby trees, there was a sudden clank, before the entire structure began rising from the ground. What had once looked like a semi-domed structure with a small attachment slowly began rising into the elephantine configuration of a fully-deployed AT-AT. As it was rising, its belly had opened up and released a pair of Speeder Bikes, which took off into the forests surrounding Tokyo-3 with a roar.

On the outskirts of town, a number of clearly-marked doors set into the ground rumbled open, the alarms and flashing lights set around it notifying anyone nearby that one of the EVA Elevators was approaching.

Instead of the biomechanical Eva, however, the lift rose into view carrying a pair of AT-STs, the bipedal armored vehicles stepping off the lift a moment before the platform sank back into the ground and the doors around it closed.

Nearby, closer to the interior of Tokyo-3, one of the larger buildings that had originally been designed to hold weapons and munitions for the Evangelions lay open, its interior having already been emptied of TIE-Defenders earlier when the craft had been scrambled to begin patrolling Tokyo-3. Down near the ground, however, a number of smaller bipedal craft began emerging, the AT-PTs looking almost comical compared to the monstrous AT-ATs, but offering appreciated support to all nearby infantry Units.

And from a number of Entrances to NERV, both hidden and well-known, hundreds of Imperial Stormtroopers poured onto the streets, falling into formations as the officers in charge relayed deployment locations.

------

As a column of M1A2's advanced towards Tokyo-3, a spotter for a nearby M110A2 Self-Propelled Howitzer caught sight of something moving in the trees. Calling in the disturbance, he trained his binoculars on the area, a moment before something large and grey appeared from the tree line. At first, he was confused, until he looked up, following what he belatedly realized was a leg, to find himself staring into the face of a gigantic vehicle of some kind.

"Oh shit! Target! bearing: 148 Degree-" Whatever he was going to say was cut off as the behemoth fired, the green burst from the medium blaster cannon blowing up the nearby vehicle and destroying everything and everyone in the nearby area.

The line of Abrams tanks slowed, their turrets rotating to target the gigantic vehicle, and a couple opened fire.

Onboard the AT-AT, the driver, a major, smirked as the HEAT Rounds impacted the body with little effect. There was some kinetic damage, but the rounds were designed to deliver a concentrated blast of superheated plasma, where as the AT-AT's armor was designed with directed-energy weapons in mind. The blast left some carbon scoring, but little else. The major turned to the secondary driver beside him. "Well, Captain, let's return the favor."

Taking a second to reorient their vehicle, the two officers took aim and fired, quickly walking a series of shots down the column of tanks.

As the blasts rapidly made their way back, the rearmost tanks roared to life, heavy diesel engines engaging to get the multiple tons of armor out of the oncoming torrent of energy blasts. A few of the tanks collided, slowing them down enough that they too were caught up, but three of them managed to avoid the volley, darting off the road and into the bordering field, where they proceeded to fire back as they tried to get some distance between them and the AT-AT behind them.

Unfortunately, the trees ahead parted, and a second AT-AT appeared, cutting off their potential escape into the forest. As the second AT-AT joined the first in taking out the remaining tanks, a distant rumble signaled the arrival of the next group of planes.

------

"That's a lot more than last time," C-2 stated, as his radar began picking out incoming targets as they emerged from the jamming area.

"C-Flight, we're to break and attack all enemy fighters with extreme prejudice."

"Acknowledged lead," C-4 Said, before rolling his TIE and reorienting it to face the incoming group of enemy fighters head-on.

"Missiles!" C-2 shouted, as dozens of incoming fighters suddenly let loose with a barrage of air-to-air missiles. Mostly AMRAAMs, but a few Sidewinders, as well.

C-4 watched the incoming weapons on his radar screen, One hand on the controls for the repulsorlifts, and just as the missiles reached terminal range, he cranked the repulsors to full, the entire craft lurching upward and most of the missiles passing by below. One of the AMRAAMs, which had been fired a little later than the rest, managed to correct and impact, but the shield caught the blast, dissipating it for the most part, and C-4 flew out of the cloud of smoke and fire to return the favor.

The incoming aircraft, realizing they'd failed to destroy their targets, broke off, a moment before green laser fire began cutting through the sky.

"Shinji! There's a tank column approaching your location. We've routed some bombers your way, but you're going to have to hold your own while they launch," Misato said from within the Garrison.

"Lieutenant Ayanami, you're close to the aerial engagement zone. If you can, assist the TIE-Defenders in the area," General Hongo ordered, glancing over at Misato for a moment before turning back to the tactical map.

"Affirmative," Rei said, turning to join the battle.

A moment later, a window popped up before her, Shinji was calling from Unit-01. "Are we supposed to kill the people inside?" he asked, looking a little worried.

"If they could, they would not hesitate to kill us," she replied.

"Yeah, but this... seems kind of unfair. They don't really have a chance, do they?"

Rei shook her head. "Fair or not, my orders are to assist, and that means destroying the enemy."

In Unit-01, Shinji was about to elaborate, thinking Rei'd misunderstood, when suddenly a second window opened, this time from Unit-04.

"Shinji, if you don't want to kill, you can try to flip the tanks over, or bend their barrels or something... but know that every time you get close, they're going to open fire on you, and if they hit a weak point in your armor, it's going to hurt. A lot." Kyle's face was frowning in concentration, and Shinji glanced at his map to see where the Imperial Commander was.

Kyle had initially moved out in Unit-04 to the designated holding area, but after confirming no enemies were going to come near, he'd decided to do something about the jamming. At the moment, he was crouching behind a hill as a mobile howitzer attempted to peg him. Nearby was another Mobile Jamming Station, and with a quick blast from his wrist-mounted laser cannons, he took out one of the many sources of jamming before turning his attention towards the cannon still trying to tag him.

Shinji was about to ask the Commander another question when suddenly something exploded against the back of Unit-01. While the new armor from the _Jupiter's Thunder_ had successfully taken the blast with minimal structural damage, the heated piece of metal was hot against Unit-01's back, and that meant Shinji now had to work with the feeling of a red-hot poker sticking him between the shoulder blades.

"Augh!' he cried, turning to glare at the tank that had emerged from the tree line to fire on him. A second tank emerged a moment later, and fired, this time the projectile impacting Unit-01's chest.

His hesitation to kill forgotten as he realized both Rei and Kyle had been correct, he brought his foot back and kicked the first tank that had fired on him, sending it crashing through the woods at speeds more common to aircraft.

The second tank crew was in the middle of reloading the main cannon when Unit-01's foot came crashing down on it, the tank's armor holding up against the pressure at first as the entire vehicle began sinking into the hillside, a moment before the structure gave way, and the turret collapsed into the crew compartment.

Rei, assuming Shinji was now too busy to talk, closed the communications window and brought Unit-00's right arm up, the left arm holding it steady, before unleashing a blast from the wrist-mounted lasers.

One of the few F-2s flying over Tokyo-3 had just managed to sneak away from the slaughter behind him when suddenly the green blasts from Unit-00 impacted with his craft and turning the multi-million dollar machine into a flaming ball of wreckage.

------

"Ballistic incoming!"

"Again?!" Ritsuko asked, not longer surprised at the announcement. The old men were putting everything into this.

"Another Chinese missile?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"Affirmative."

"I'm getting kind of sick of this, Can you try to shoot that one down, SHODAN? It may be long range, but this time, if we miss, all we'll hit is water," Makoto stated.

"The Long-Range weapons weren't designed to hit such a small, quick-moving target. It is unlikely to work," the AI replied, but a moment later, four of the Medium Turbolaser batteries rotated, the barrels rising to line up with the trajectory SHODAN was feeding the gunnery station, and after a second, they fired, the large green blast of heavily concentrated plasma and energy streaking away from the ship at high speed. After the first shot passed the missile, the other guns fired, each one using the details gained from the previous blast to modify their intercept course. Unfortunately, the missile erupted, the last blast taking out the spent body while the sole Re-Entry Vehicle accelerated to its final destination before exploding spectacularly, the warhead once again brightening the skies over Tokyo-3.

"This is getting old," Nabiki grumbled, as the windows slowly brightened as the anti-flash systems receded.

"Indeed," Makoto said, before turning to Captain Archer. "Captain, get a shuttle of Storm Commandos ready and take out the launch site in China."

"Yes, Lady Kino."

Makoto glared at the edge of the Chinese landmass visible below. It was time to stop these annoying repetitions.

While most of the Imperial Units below were fighting, the Lambda-Class Shuttle was quickly prepped for launch, and loaded with a number of Storm Commandos. After taking off, the Officer In Charge, a Colonel, spoke up.

"Alright, listen up! Our Target is a series of Launch sites for long-range ballistic missiles."

As the briefing continued, the shuttle passed outside the Jamming zone, and one of the many AWACS systems circling Tokyo-3 like vultures picked up the faint return from above.

While a majority of the airwaves were still unusable due to the recent nuclear detonation above, the plane managed to alert their one surprise lying in wait along the Chinese coastline.

As the shuttle descended over the mainland, behind it, a long black shape emerged from the ocean depths, its treated-hull -designed to withstand the crushing depths of the ocean-becoming visible as it reached the proper depth. The USS_ Tennessee_, an _Ohio_-class Ballistic Missile Submarine, had quietly waited here for two weeks, after sneaking into Chinese territorial waters and awaiting further orders.

Those orders had arrived today, and had been checked and re-checked before the captain had grudgingly admitted their veracity. Now they'd just received targeting coordinates.

After a brief prayer, the captain gave the order, and the sub shuddered as one of its Trident II D-5 missiles was ejected from its tube in a cloud of gas. After a moment to distance itself from the sub, its first stage motor ignited, and its aero-spike extended, a moment before the missile burst from the water and tearing off after the Shuttle.

While the missile was not designed to work as a surface-to-air weapon, the shuttle was on a direct approach, and unless it deviated, the blast from the 3.5 megaton warhead would hopefully take the ship out. The Flight path was not a typical ballistic path, and the missile accelerated diagonally, slowly rising above the horizon, like a cruise missile.

Above, the _Thunder_ watched as the shuttle approached the launch zone, and only at the last minute did any of the systems register the missile. Before that, the sensor-ghost had been dismissed as an affect of the dissipating EMP field and the Jamming going on below.

An officer reached forward to transmit a warning, but before he could, the missile's warhead exploded, the warhead having reached its designated point of destruction and going off a mere hundred feet behind the shuttle.

The Shuttle's shields were strong, and they held up against the blast at first, but the constant barrage and pressure threw the craft around harder than the inertial dampers could readily correct, and the crew aboard was thrown to the floor at the same time the shuttle was thrown from its course. Before anyone could regain control, it crashed into the side of a mountain.

"Shuttle is lost," Someone stated, finally, as the feed from the shuttle was cut off. On the horizon, the nuclear flash had been apparent, and was now gone, as if it had never been. Makoto grimaced at the thought of having sent those men off to die, and around her, a few people stepped back as she trembled in rage.

"It's not your fault," Nabiki said, softly from beside her.

"No? Because I get the distinct feeling it was," Makoto ground out, turning to look at where the flash had taken place a moment later.

"Where did that missile come from?" she asked.

After a moment of silence, she turned back to the Officer who'd been constantly keeping her updated on the incoming missiles.

"Where. Did. It. Come. From?"

The officer paled and turned back to his console, bringing up the last few minutes of raw telemetry recordings and tried to backtrack the missile. While most of the crew had always treated Lord Kyle much like the original Imperials had treated Darth Vader, the young officer now realized Lady Kino was just as capable of taking her anger out on a crew man, or so he assumed.

Finally, after a minute of total silence, the officer spoke up. "It was a submarine launched missile off the coast of China. It had a rather unorthodox flight-path, but judging from its speed and yield, it was apparently an American Trident II missile."

"Can you find out where it was launched from?" she asked immediately after.

"You're not going to-" Nabiki started to say, before Makoto cut her off.

"Yes. Yes I am going to. Nobody strikes at us and gets away with it. Especially not with such a hit-and fade attack."

"We will have to move from our position to get a good firing angle," SHODAN pointed out.

"After we take out that sub, we're going to take out those nuke silos," Makoto explained.

"You're going to at least leave us _The Nerve_, right?" Kyle asked, from below. He'd been keeping track of the conversation, but hadn't wanted to speak up until now.

Makoto nodded, before telling him yes when she realized that Unit-04 wasn't connected visually.

"Well then... I guess the best I can tell you is happy hunting," Kyle replied, sounding pre-occupied.

Below, Unit-04 was being tag teamed by both air and ground Units. A group of tanks had spread out within the woods and began firing randomly at the Eva's backside, while a trio of UN Hovercraft would dart around Unit-04's head and fire off an occasional missile.

Shinji was faring better, having depleted the area's supply of Abrams, though occasionally one of the many fighters running from the TIE-Defenders would take a shot at Unit-01 as it flew by, determined to use their missiles on something.

Rei had taken up position within the outskirts of Tokyo-3, one of the outlying skyscrapers protecting her backside as she took potshots at passing enemy aircraft.

As the _Jupiter's Thunder_ broke its stationary orbit and headed west, a call went out from an observatory in northern Japan, a moment later the telescope re-oriented itself to watch the smaller Star Destroyer in orbit. A second call alerted the field commander outside Tokyo-3 that the heavy air support had pulled out.

Making a quick call, he, in turn, notified an airbase in South Korea, where 9 oversized transports were waiting for the signal to launch.

Outside of Tokyo-3, south of where Kyle was engaging the tanks and hovercraft, and to the east of where Rei was currently lining up a shot at an incoming F-22, a number of tanks began congregating, their location still bearing some scars from where Zeruel had first started to encounter Tokyo-3's defenses.

"Alright, we have confirmation, we move out in five," an JSSDF Colonel shouted, before climbing into one of the numerous vehicles hiding in the tree line. As dozens of engines revved up in preparation, the colonel turned to his quiet passenger, who had stopped humming and was now watching the sky wearily. "We'll travel near the head of the column. Are you ready?" The Colonel asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Yes, colonel... this will all be over soon," Kaworu said, before he started humming softly again.

The atmosphere had settled down some and the airwaves, while still fairly scrambled, were just beginning to clear up, when the column moved out.

"Numerous ground targets moving in from the East, moving in to intercept," C Flight Lead stated, rolling his craft to engage the vehicles breaking from the tree line. So far, there'd been little in the way of opposition, the few fights he'd gotten into being decidedly one-sided as he scored kill after kill while depleting the enemy's ranks.

"Ground forces diverted your way," Someone in the garrison below responded as he lined his craft up for a strafing run. The whine of his lasers split the sky, and the green lance darted forward to take out one of the leading Tanks, the next couple blowing craters into the ground before the fourth impacted the-

A glowing field of concentric orange hexagons caught the next few bolts, and when they finally began striking the ground again, the blasts were all on the far side of the column.

"Command, this column is shielded. Switching to missiles," the pilot said, as he swung his craft around for another shot. Before he got halfway, however, the Defender's missile warning system began screaming at him, and a moment later, a number of high-speed wire-guided rockets from a pair of JSSDF Hovercraft impacted against his shield, battering it into nonexistence, before several tore into the cockpit and solar panels.

The Colonel suppressed a grimace as a cheer went up at the first confirmed kill in this theater, and glanced at the young passenger who'd saved them from certain death without even lifting a finger.

Above, far beyond visual range, specially modified sensors aboard _The Nerve_ detected something anomalous and raised an alarm those in the bridge had grown to hate.

"Blue Pattern AT-Field detected near Tokyo-3," Makoto Hyuga stated as he read the information off the screen before him.

"How far out?" Commander Fuyutsuki asked from the upper level.

"Two kilometers," was the quick reply.

"Far enough. Can we hit that area from here?" He asked, scowling at the still-static-y image of Tokyo-3.

"It'll be risky, sir. Our aim isn't going to be too good with the interference from those nukes," Lieutenant Aoba responded.

"Speaking of, we're about to take care of that," Nabiki said, from _Jupiter's Thunder._

As she spoke, the massive warship was taking up a position above the valley sensors had indicated the most probable launch point for the nuclear weapons that had been detonating over Tokyo-3 repeatedly since the battle began.

It took the middle Tendo a second to realize what she was looking at from this angle, nearly straight down, but her eyes narrowed when the floor of the valley became visible. On her world, there were dozens of pools of water, each one cursed to turn whoever fell into them into whatever drowned in there with a splash of cold water. Here, however, the pools were gone, replaced by a number of below-ground ICBM Silos, the dark openings sinister counterparts to the springs she'd been accustomed to.

Where the Amazon Village had rested was a large bunker and barracks, numerous vehicles, both armored and not sitting out in the sunlight as soldiers scurried around.

Makoto Kino, Sailor Jupiter, frowned at the image before her, before turning to the weapons control officer. "I want that valley sterilized."

"Launch!" someone called out, and indeed, one of the black pools had lit up from within as steam and smoke poured out of nearby vents moments before another ICBM rose out of its silo and quickly accelerated towards the sky.

"You've got one final incoming warhead, Tokyo-3," Nabiki said, as the first heavy Turbolaser spoke out, its green blast devastating a large portion of the valley. Moments later another spoke, then another, and soon, every weapon aboard had contributed, the dome of fire that had been Jusendo Valley finally halting its growth a moment later as the last blast detonated.

As the warship rotated to return to its position above Tokyo-3, the wall of flame dispersed enough that the floor of the valley, now a lava-like molten mess became visible, the glowing liquid slowly cooling as the _Thunder_ disappeared from what few nearby radar screens remained.

The Warhead that had been launched moments before its silo had been destroyed detonated before _The Nerve_ could get enough of a targeting feed to try and take out Kaworu. Fuyutsuki scowled and relayed that to ground forces, many of which were directed to intercept.

"I... understand," Shinji said, as he received orders to move in. He'd never met Kaworu, but he'd read the summaries, and a part of him had felt bad about how the battle with the Seventeenth angel had played out. Partially because Asuka had teased him relentlessly about it, and partially because even now, with all the changes, he'd understood, in some part, what that other Shinji had felt.

"Hold on, long range sensors are picking something new up," Misato said on the Eva-only channel. A moment later he heard her curse. "Incoming aircraft, nine Eva-carriers."

"The Mass-Production series?" Kyle asked, before shaking his head. What else could they be?

"_Nerve_, can you target them?" Kyle asked.

"We can, but they're turning away, looks like they've released their payload. And the sensors are now beginning to pick up a number of new contacts. They've got reinforcements... a lot of them."

Kyle grimaced within Unit-04," General Hongo, pull the ground forces back into the city proper, and prepare all Units for urban warfare. Rei, Shinji and I will try to hold off the MP Eva's."

"I'm sending down a squadron of Defenders from the _Thunder_, Admiral Yuki added.

The numerous AT-ATs, previously wreaking havoc among the tanks and fighters making their way towards Tokyo-3 turned and began trekking towards the city proper; the frozen, powerless skyscrapers and buildings ahead causing the drivers no small amount of concern. There weren't any civilians inside them, but their maneuverability would be shot.

"All AT-AT's will form a perimeter just outside the city proper, with AT-STs taking up position along major highways and roads into town," General Hongo's voice rang out, moments before each AT-AT received a data packet that showed where they would be positioned. "Stormtrooper squads will be spread out within the city, heavy encampments at major intersections, with AT-PT support. Snipers and demolition teams moving into position now."

Misato picked up where the General left off, "Rei, you and Unit Zero will take up position to the north of town. Kyle, I want you to take the southeast side of town, and Shinji, you're on the southwest. I'm sending you all updates to your map. We've highlighted the Eva Lifts nearest your position. If you need extraction, those are all ready to take you down."

When the Major had finished, Admiral Yuki spoke up, "Since we'll no doubt have ground Units mixing it up, all aerial Units are to focus solely on other air-Units." Before their pilots could speak up, the Admiral continued, "All TIE-Bombers are to head back to their assigned berths aboard the_Thunder_."

On their way back to Tokyo-3, the _Thunder_ had slowed as it passed the Chinese coastline, before speeding away. "We're not going to attack?" Nabiki asked, looking over the hologram displaying the location of the USS Tennessee at Makoto.

Makoto shook her head once. "That's too close to the coast for the amount of firepower we'd need to hit a target that deep. The soldiers at the silos were one thing, innocent civilians, however..."

Nabiki merely nodded, before turning to watch a number of TIE-Defenders heading down into the atmosphere on the display.

"SHODAN, how much longer before the EMP and radiation dies down enough for the Teleporters to be usable again?" She asked.

"Teleporters will be usable in approximately one hour; less if you wish to risk partial destabilization," the AI replied.

"Destabilization?"

The officer in charge of the teleportation system grimaced, before replying, "basically, you either fail to turn up at the other side, or if you do, you're missing parts, or they're no longer attached in the correct places, ma'am."

Nabiki paled at that, before calling down, "All Units be advised, Teleporters will be offline for another sixty minutes."

Kyle, within Unit-04, smirked as he made his way to the southeast side of town. In the distance, out over the ocean, he could see a number of wide contrails from what he assumed were the Eva-carriers. Zooming his optical sensors, it took a moment to spot the nine Units they'd released, which were swiftly making their way towards Tokyo-3 on their white wings.

"Good god, those things are ugly. Who the hell decided to paint the lips?"

As if hearing him, one of the Units turned towards Unit-04, still miles away, and its red-lipped mouth pulled back into a smile, before it and four others veered towards him.

"Oh, nice..." Kyle mumbled.

Outside Tokyo-3, the sounds of battle began to die down as the AT-ATs and AT-STs pulled back towards town, despite the damage they had been doing to the opposing force just minutes ago. As confused drivers and pilots radioed for orders concerning the enemies sudden change of tactics, the static of the last detonation slowly fading away, the nine mass production Evas crossed into Tokyo-3 airspace, drawing the attention of a number of the TIE's defending the city. Two of them took Proton Torpedoes to the face, while the rest were liberally peppered with laser blasts. Or, that's what the pilots had intended, instead, the attacks were stopped again by a series of concentric hexagons, and a moment later, from behind the huge Units, a number of fighters launched from the UN Carrier group returned fire, missiles and bullets slicing through the air and scattering the Defenders, who quickly began to return the favor.

Unlike last time, in which all the contemporary fighters had been outnumbered, this time the twelve TIE-Defenders were outnumbered almost 4 to one and another swarm of fighters from the north joined in a moment later, this group having low along the coast to avoid detection as long as possible.

Inside the cockpit of C Flight Lead, previously C-2, the missile warning system wailed nonstop as the pilot corkscrewed, juked, and rolled out of multiple missile's flight paths, the occasional near-miss punctuated by a sharp decline in shields that suddenly seemed to take forever to recharge. Ahead of him, a shape suddenly flashed across his field of vision, a Japanese F-2 that was there and gone too quick to take a shot, and a moment later his craft shuddered as it passed through the fighter's jet wash.

Pulling up hard, he spun his craft in a turn that would have broken his back had his TIE not had Inertial dampers before diving towards the street to evade the incoming missiles and get some room to maneuver.

One of the missiles, an AIM-9 Sidewinder, lost its lock, but picked up another again, turning to home in to its target and detonating when it managed to reach the suddenly less-maneuverable target. The unfortunate F-15J Pilot never had a chance to bail out before his plane exploded around him.

C Flight Leader pulled out if his dive a mere five meters above the ground, climbing slightly to give an AT-ST a little space, before weaving around a darkened skyscraper and coming in towards the swarm of enemy fighters from below, where a rapid series of laser blasts took out a couple of fighters before he was back in the thick of things. As some of the fighters turned to deal with this new threat, a sudden flurry of green blasts flew by, ten more fighters disappearing in flames as the new group of TIEs from the _Thunder_ arrived to help even out the odds.

Below, Stormtroopers stopped briefly to watch the fight going on overhead, or to get out of the way of falling wreckage, while anxious commanders watched the outlying roads for the forces he knew were incoming. The AT-AT drivers had been ordered to call ahead if anything made it past them, but it never hurt to be careful.

There was a sudden whine and Stormtroopers scattered moments before an artillery shell detonated nearby, reducing a storefront to rubble. "We're being shelled!" A number of troopers cried out as all over the city, explosive shells began to rain down at random.

Misato grimaced at the tactical display before her, wishing the airwaves were clearer. The radar systems here could track each individual shell, and backtrack its trajectory to the launcher, but with the static still messing with sensors, she'd have to guess where the artillery Units were. At least with the lack of nukes, she could transmit targeting date to take out the remaining jammers in the outlying forest.

Taking a moment to compose herself, she quickly relayed the locations triangulated from the TIE-Defenders during their patrol and the garrison she was currently standing within to _The Nerve_, which took a moment, before raining down fire from orbit, the jamming in the air clearing rapidly as mobile emitters were destroyed. A few of the mobile artillery Units were hit as well, and the few that remained quickly moved from their position before firing again.

One of the Artillery drivers winced as a shadow went by overhead, expecting at any moment to have his vehicle explode around him, but when no explosion resulted, he looked up and gasped at the gigantic white-winged figure heading towards the city he was currently bombarding.

Shinji scowled within the Entry Plug of Unit-01 as two of the Mass production Evas landed before him. A glance at his tactical display showed that two others were headed towards Unit-00, while the rest all seemed to be heading towards Unit-04. Telling Misato as much, he ejected Unit-01's Progressive Knife, and crouched, preparing for the two Units before him to move.

"Remember Shinji, these Units are piloted by Dummy plug systems. If Asuka could take them all out on her own, you should have no problem with only two. Just watch out for their weapons, and remember to destroy their core," Misato said softly over the comm.

Shinji frowned slightly. He already knew that. And he remembered exactly what had happened when Unit-02 had run out of power and the Mass Production Units had reactivated. Gripping the knife tighter, Unit-01 tensed, before pouncing, an inarticulate scream escaping Shinji's lips as he moved to engaged.

Rei had simply waited for the two Units to make their move, but unlike Shinji's pair, the two facing her moved in immediately, and she had to dive out of the way as one took a swing at her with its weapon as it passed by overhead. The second veered and attempted to take her out while she was still down, but she calmly fired a concussion missile at it, which detonated against its AT-Field, obscuring its vision and giving her a chance to move out of the way of its now-wild attack.

Kyle stared at the MP Eva that had smiled at him from afar as two others landed behind him, and the final two took to circling the city.

"Cute," he mumbled, before firing a proton torpedo at the one before him. As with Rei, the torpedo impacted an AT-Field, but unlike the First, Kyle dove into the explosion, coming out the other side of the smoke and flame with a haymaker and a counter-AT-Field that caught the smiling Unit in the chest and sent it flying back. Its armor was cracked from the blast, but after flopping around for a second, it began to climb to its feet, while Kyle moved to avoid the other pair, who had engaged a moment after he had.

To the east, the column of vehicles neared the city, and the AT-ATs nearby concentrated their firepower on them, only to have their blasts intercepted by Kaworu's AT-Field. After reporting this in, Misato opened up a communication channel to the Evas, "Rei, Shinji, Kaworu's approaching the city. One of you needs to break off and intercept him."

"... A little busy at the moment," Shinji growled as he ducked under a swing that would have taken Unit-01's head off had it connected, before lashing out with the Progressive knife and scoring a hit across the Mass Production Unit's side. Had it been a person, the slash would have opened a large cut just below someone's ribs. Instead, it compromised the semi-rigid armor, and barely nicked the surface of the Evangelion beneath.

Rei, on the other hand, had one of her foes by the arm and yanked hard, twisting her enemy off balance, where she let go and spun fast, bringing her leg up and across to drop on the Mass Production Unit's back with a bone-shattering crunch. Red fluid poured from the seams in the armor as the body was driven into the ground by Rei's spinning axe kick, and as her spin continued, she pulled her progressive knife and brought it down on the Enemy Eva's battered back, driving through its armor and deeply into the core, silencing it forever. "One Mass Production Unit down." She stated, ducking as a battleship-gray heavy lance passed through the air above her. Unfortunately, her Progressive knife was stuck in the core of the 'dead' Eva, and she had to abandon it when dodging the swing.

Moving quickly, while the other Unit was off balance from its missed swing, she lashed out with both hands, shoving the Unit away before taking off at a sprint that strained the armor in her Unit's legs. As the Mass Production Unit stumbled back, Rei caught up with it, grabbed hold of the hand holding the heavy lance with both arms, and leapt over the second Unit, using her forward momentum to pivot around the off-balance enemy before throwing it as hard as Unit-00 could. After all the practice she'd subjected herself to with training, she pulled the move off flawlessly, and the Mass Production Unit was airborne, headed towards Shinji, who was currently grappling with one of his Units, the other currently squirming as nervous feedback from a severed arm kept it down.

Rei's throw had dislocated the thrown Unit's arm, as well as shatter the bones and supports around the Unit's wrist, and its limp hand dropped the heavy lance, which she picked up, as she made her way to where Misato was directing her.

Meanwhile, the AT-AT Drivers were growing more and more concerned as the column of vehicles drew closer and every shot they and their AT-ST companions had fired were caught by the AT-Field projected ahead of the vehicles seemingly at all time.

One of the foremost AT-AT Gunnery officers was about to fire again when a shadow passed over the cockpit, causing him and the driver to pause. "What the-" He started to ask, before suddenly, the AT-AT beside them exploded, the entire vehicle cut in half by the heavy lance of one of the Mass Production Eva's that had been, until recently, circling above Tokyo-3.

The Mass Production Eva turned to look at them, and tensed to jump their way, when a pair of legs drove into its back at speed, driving the enemy's face into the ground where it slid to a halt at the end of a lengthy furrow in the dirt. Unit-00 quickly scrambled after the assailant, as the Gunnery officer and Driver quietly thanks her for her timely intervention.

As the two Units squared off, the column approached even closer, and suddenly began returning fire, the tanks focusing all their firepower on the AT-ST's while anyone with a rifle or machine gun began peppering the AT-AT's cockpit with bullets. The Transparisteel held off the attack easily, but the distraction was enough that the final third of the column, primarily made up of APCs, suddenly accelerated ahead, out of the range of fire, and into the city, where, almost as one, they began to disgorge their Units, each one packed beyond normal limits with JSSDF soldiers.

"Enemy contact! Enemy Soldiers have breached the perimeter!" A sniper stated, as he drew a bead on an enemy soldier and fired. Unlike the standard weapons of the Stormtrooper, the E-11, Stormtrooper Snipers carried the DC-15x Sniper Rifle, which was much more accurate, as well as being much more deadly. Designed for use in an era full of armor to protect against blasters, the JSSDF's Kevlar Helmets and Titanium-reinforced Body Armor was vaporized along with the brain or heart of whatever unfortunate soldier the snipers positioned within the buildings targeted.

On the ground, the soldiers were beginning to panic as unseen assailants were thinning their ranks at a terrific rate. "GO GO GO!" someone shouted, as the soldiers that had exited each vehicle began running, most following those ahead, while the few in the lead were pushed along by the mob behind them. Unfortunately, most of those in the lead were cut down as they rounded a corner and approached the first intersection in which an E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster had been secured. Quickly scrambling for cover, the soldiers began calling for fire support from the mobile artillery outside the city, and a moment later, shells began raining down, most towards the heavy weapons emplacement, but some on buildings where Officers and NCOs felt the Snipers might be hiding.

After disgorging a majority of their troops, the APCs, Mostly M2 Bradley's and British-made Warriors, accelerated behind their charges, The armor on each thick enough to stop most sniper shots, and as they began to flank the soldiers they'd disgorged, few broke off from the main group and headed towards a hole in the armor of Tokyo-3 where a building had once stood.

Kyle grimaced as a pair of heavy lances clanged together in the space his Unit's head had been a second ago. Two Mass Production Eva's lay at Unit-04's feet, one sliced neatly in two by its own weapon, the two halves of its core glinting darkly in the afternoon sun, while the other had a fairly small hole in its chest where a rapid fire burst of Unit-04's wrist mounted lasers had penetrated the armor, skin, and spine of the incapacitated Unit.

"This is getting annoying," he grumbled, as he swung up with his liberated heavy lance. With a gush of red fluid that temporarily painted his view crimson, one of the offending Unit's stumbled back, its arms reduced to a pair of stumps a moment before a thrust sent the weapon into its chest and through the core.

"Two down," he said, before something plowed into him from behind. The fifth Eva, the one that had been circling, had decided to swoop in shoulder first and ram Unit-04 in the back, a sneaky-yet-effective maneuver. As he stumbled to a stop, something glinted out of the corner of his eye, and his hand shot up, a moment before the Heavy lance stopped against an AT-Field and hovered there, before morphing into a copy of the Lance of Longinus.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, before throwing Unit-04 back as the AT-Field collapsed under the power of the Lance. Deprived of its target, the lance continued on, its brief stop doing nothing to alter its momentum as it continued on, until it speared, by pure chance, an AT-AT, which fell over from the force of the impact.

"Son of a bitch," Kyle cursed, as the remaining Evas renewed their attack.

Rei had seen the AT-AT go down as the gray lance had speared its side, but could do nothing for the crew as she dodged another swing from her opponent. Unlike the pair she'd fought, this one seemed far more intelligent, keeping her off balance with random and unexpected attacks, and occasionally throwing things at her that it picked up, like AT-ST's, trees, and even buildings if their fight got too close to the town.

Behind Kyle, the lazed Mass Production Eva slowly climbed to its feet. Rei noticed the movement, dodged another charge, and spun, sprinting all-out before ramming the rising Unit with her shoulder as it prepared to take a swing at Unit-04's unprotected backside.

Before she could turn, however, her other assailant hit Unit-00 in a diving tackle that took both Units further east, towards the coast, where the shoved Unit was again slowly crawling to its feet.

Shinji, who had dispatched one of his opponents by shoving an armed proton torpedo through an earlier-made wound, was now fighting against the other Eva he'd started with, as well as the one Rei had thrown at him. The thrown Eva's bad arm was dangling limply for the most part, though occasionally it would twitch or spasm, which was unnerving to watch as the tremor would hit the broken, mangled wrist and the entire hand would flop around in a way no healthy hand could ever move. It unnerved Shinji every time it happened, and if he didn't know better, he'd have assumed the Mass Production Unit was doing it on purpose.

Misato shouted for joy when the radar operator nearby reported that they had just gotten a faint return on the enemy artillery shells. The defenses within the city had been well-laid out, but the advancing soldiers were systematically working their way in, despite their losses to snipers, and calling in artillery barrages that quickly took out whatever defenses were in place. Despite their far superior firepower and armor, the defenders were forced to retreat further and further into the city as enemies were engaged, lest they be on the receiving end of some very lethal rain.

"_Nerve, Thunder,_ I'm going to need fire support soon. We're almost able to backtrack the artillery to its point of origin," she explained.

"Understood. We'll also have teleportation up in another forty-five minutes or so, give or take ten," Nabiki replied.

Misato nodded at the small image of the Admiral, before turning to the radar operator, who began uploading telemetry and targeting data as the airwaves grew clearer as time passed.

Outside of Tokyo-3, most of the Artillery teams were watching the Fighting Evas and defending AT-ATs with awe and no small amount of anger. As directions and ranges were called in from various forces within the city, the appropriate team would plot their shot and fire, and adjust as required by the soldiers who'd been playing spotter, until they were given the all-clear. Suddenly, from above, the artillery Units, used to raining death down upon their foes, began disappearing in hellish fireballs as Turbolaser blasts dropped down onto them as their positions were given away by each shot fired.

The few artillery Units that hadn't been destroyed immediately began shuffling around, their shots growing less and less accurate as they tried to stay ahead of the Turbolaser blasts and continue providing support to the forces within the city.

Back inside the garrison, the Radar operation's computer station was now not only tracking each shot back to where it came from, it was also calculating the amount of time between shots and each one's general location, and extrapolating probably enemy locations based on direction, range, and times. More mobile artillery Units went up in flames as some which had tried moving in a straight line were anticipated and destroyed, while those with a predictable pattern of movement weren't too far behind.

Within the city, the disruption of their artillery barrage meant that the invaders were now fighting on more 'even' ground, though with superior technology, the Imperial Forces within the city definitely had the advantage. The JSSDF's rapid advance ground to a halt, and slowly began to fall back as the defenders found themselves no longer under bombardment. The occasional artillery shell still fell, but now there was just as much a chance of the moving artillery Units to drop a shell in the midst of the JSSDF forces as there was for it to land a hit on the Stormtroopers.

What hadn't been accounted for was the durability of the armor and weapons. While most of the JSSDF soldiers were hesitant to put on Stormtrooper armor for fear of friendly fire, the dropped D-11 blasters were quickly becoming a hot commodity, and now, along with bullets, the Stormtroopers would occasionally take a blaster bolt, which was much more likely to puncture their armor, coming from a military weapon of Imperial-level technology.

As the battle became more and more of a massive firefight, a new wave of attackers suddenly emerged over the tree line: a number of JSSDF Hoverjets, though only a few bore the boxy MLRS seen earlier. The majority held special pods that opened as the rapidly-moving craft came to a sudden stop mid-city, and from within dropped a dozen men, quickly reinforcing the invader army, before taking off to pick up more. While a few of the Hoverjets were shot down both coming and going, a majority of the TIE-Defenders were busy with the remaining jets in the air, which had thinned considerably.

One of the Defenders had just caught an F/A-18 with a laser to its fuel-tank when suddenly one of the few MRLS-equipped Hoverjets unleashed a trio of rockets at it, the high-speed unguided weapon systems packed with high explosives that battered the shields down before tearing apart the Defender far quicker than most air-to-air missiles were capable of.

The Hoverjet pilot knew that had been a lucky shot, but didn't question it as he turned and prepared to unleash the remainder of his payload into the side of one of the large vehicles defending the city. Taking aim, he pulled the trigger, and 15 high-powered rockets took off, exploding against the upper side of an AT-AT with enough force to knock it over.

To the east, from the ocean, a dull roar was heard as a barrage of cruise missiles passed over the shore on course towards Tokyo-3. With the help from a laser-equipped spotter far enough away not to draw attention to himself, three of the missiles impacted squarely with the legs of another AT-AT, the sheer force of the combined blast reversing the knee-joint as it had been flexing, destroying the internal drive mechanisms and starting a fire in the engine compartment.

The remaining cruise missiles suddenly climbed sharply- one disappearing under a withering hail of shots from a TIE-Defender and another crashing into the belly of an attacking F-15- before nosing down and impacting with unnerving accuracy upon a the remains of a building that had early been devastated by some precision-guided bombs.

The remains, which had sat at the bottom of their hole in the armor, groaned once before collapsing into the Geofront below.

"Breach in the armor!" someone cried from below. Fuyutsuki scowled at that, turning to look at the display now displaying the breach. With Shinji aware of how Third Impact worked, as well as the fact that cameras aboard had clearly shown several Mass Production Evas destroyed beyond regeneration, Lilith was utterly useless in Third Impact.

Fuyutsuki's eyes narrowed. While he hadn't heard the order, it was fairly reasonable to assume that Kyle had had Adam moved up to the _Thunder_ when all this had started. The fact that Admiral Tendo had taken a shuttle instead of teleporting up, as well as her sudden acquisition of a remarkably familiar suitcase had given him the impression that Adam was out of reach. So was SEELE unaware that the treasure they sought was out of their reach?

Keying in a private communications channel to the bridge of the _Thunder_, he requested Nabiki and a moment later a miniature hologram of her appeared on the desk before him. "Admiral, is it safe for me to assume you brought Adam with you to the _Thunder_?"

"You'd be correct," she replied, quickly.

"Do you know if SEELE could have had any way to known that Adam is still in Tokyo-3," he asked with a frown.

"Not likely. I only retrieved the briefcase from room 11B when Kyle asked _after_ the Magi went down."

"Then it's Lilith they're after," Fuyutsuki said with a sigh. "I'll call the Sub-Commander."

"He's actually... " Nabiki trailed off. "Never mind. I'll see what kind of forces we can move to intercept, though without an Eva, I fear any Stormtroopers, no matter how well equipped, are going to do little to even slow Kaworu down."

Kyle was stumped. While he was down to two opponents, one- the wily Eva that had body-checked Unit-04 from the sky- had his Eva in a two-handed headlock, while Unit-04 had just broken the other Eva's neck with its legs. Without damaging the core, it was only a matter of time before it got back up again, and so far, he'd broken the neck twice. "This is a fine little stalemate," he muttered, a moment before Fuyutsuki appeared on the Comm.

"Kyle, we've got trouble. Kaworu might be close to accessing the Geofront, and we've nothing that can stop him."

"..." Kyle stared at the screen for a moment, wondering if today was just a bad dream. Before he could respond, however, there was a rushing sound, and suddenly he was back in the endless expanse of LCL, face-to-face with Armisael.

"Bad timing," he said with a wince.

"You simpleton! Have you forgotten just how you defeated me?" she said, glaring.

"I crammed you down here where I hoped you'd go away, instead you interrupt me in the middle of a –" Kyle was cut off as she interrupted.

"You _absorbed_me! You... your Eva has that which made me _me _within it."

Kyle blinked, uncomprehending for a moment. Finally, "so... It has an S2 engine?"

"No!" She cried, then paused. "Yes!" She frowned. "More than that. It has my abilities. Remember, what happened when your allies came into contact with me?"

Kyle's frown disappeared. "You mean...?

Armisael nodded, her frown disappeared and a slight smile taking its place. "Yes. Relax enough for me to assist, and we'll end this stalemate decisively."

Suddenly he was back in Unit-04, and Fuyutsuki was talking to him "-stop him at all costs!"

"Working on it, " he replied, before closing his eyes and relaxing, reaching out for that empty place that he'd stuffed Armisael. He felt the Mass Production Eva holding him tighten its grip as Unit-04 went limp, but ignored it, reaching out for the unconventional ally within and finally feeling something entirely not-him also reaching out. With a mental tug, he suddenly found himself sharing the Entry plug with Armisael's human form, though she was transparent and not wearing a plug suit... or anything else at all...

"Umm... you're naked." Kyle said.

"Ignore it," she said, only he heard it in his head, instead of through his ears. She glanced around once, before nodding to herself.

"I'm what?" Fuyutsuki asked, looking somewhat worried. If Kyle was going off the deep end, this day was going to end in the worst way possible.

"Not you, Commander. Armisael." Kyle explained, shutting off the communications link.

Armisael looked around, before placing her hand on Kyle's shoulder. "Get ready," she said, waiting a moment before she disappeared.

Behind Unit-04, between the shoulder blades, two bulges in the armor glowed white hot against the Mass Production Eva's chest, a moment before a pair of glowing white helixes shot out of Unit-04, spearing the Eva holding it twice, before stopping at forty meters.

"Holy shit!" Misato cried, as she saw it happen on one of the displays of the battlefield.

Kyle grunted as he suddenly felt pain in his chest, though looking down there was nothing wrong. Suddenly, he realized he was synching with the other Mass Production Eva, Unit-04's angelic contamination overriding the dummy plug as the corruption slowly spread.

"Kyle, your synch rate is beginning to fall," Ritusko's voice said, from the comm. He didn't reply, merely nodding. While it was amazing how quickly the contamination was spreading in the other Unit, it was totally screwing with his concentration, and he felt his control over Unit-04 begin to slip.

"Allow me," Armisael said, once, before disappearing entirely. Suddenly the sensations from the Mass Production Eva disappeared, and he fell free as it released him. The two were still connected by the two tentacle-like helixes of light, but as the corruption visibly spread to cover the rest of the Mass Production Unit, he felt none of it. A moment later, the Unit shuddered before standing up.

An incoming video link suddenly requested his attention, and mentally opening the channel, he blinked as he saw Armisael sitting in a bizarre, darkened Entry Plug.

"Who the hell-"

"Identify yourself!"  
"It's not possible..."

Numerous outcries at the appearance of a total stranger on the Videonet rang out before Kyle silenced them all. "Everyone, meet Armisael. Armisael, meet everyone. Now, back to the fight."

With the tables turned, Kyle and Armisael quickly dispatched the second Mass Production Eva, before turning towards Tokyo-3.

"We cannot separate or it will sever the link," Armisael said, as the distance between both Units grew. Kyle slowed Unit-04 somewhat, as the Mass Production Unit behind it slowly began to walk more evenly. Wishing there was a little more length between them, Kyle was surprised when he felt something shifting, and suddenly one of the tentacles of light retracted from the Mass Production Eva, disappearing into his back, while the other doubled in length.

"Convenient," he mumbled as he moved towards the opening in the armor surrounding Tokyo-3.

Ahead, at the edge of the hole, carefully avoiding any unsteady-looking rubble, a pair of M2 Bradleys pulled to a stop a moment before opening up to reveal Kaworu, and a team of Special Forces Commandos hand-picked for this mission.

"I told you," one said to another, as they gathered around the hole and looked at the almost-pristine fields below. 'Almost' because directly below them, lying half-in and half-out of the lake within the Geofront was the remains of the skyscraper that had once occupied the hole they now intended to jump through to enter.

"Thank you for getting me this far, gentlemen," Kaworu suddenly said, his voice slightly melancholy, "but I'm afraid from here on out I must do this alone."

Most of the officers around paused as they were pulling on their ramair parachutes before one spoke up, "our orders were to escort you into the enemy base where you could stop these terrorists from causing Third Impact."

Kaworu shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, you were misinformed. My goal is to get in there and _cause_ Third Impact." Before any of them could react to that, Kaworu rose in the air, the faint shimmer of air below him indicating his use of an AT-Field to defy gravity.

"Son of a-" one commando said, drawing his sidearm. Before he got halfway there, however, another had shot him in the head.

"Go, Kid. Do your job," the plant said, as the others began drawing their weapons. As Kaworu dropped out of sight, the sound of gunfire behind him growing distant, he slipped into the oppressive shade of the Geofront and made his way to the darkened pyramid below.

Far above him, the aerial battle had thinned some as numerous atmospheric fighters were destroyed, and the occasion Space Superiority fighter was overwhelmed and taken out.

Below, the remaining AT-ATs, now moving around in unpredictable patterns, would occasionally took out a tank or APC that tried to make a run for the city.

The airwaves around Tokyo-3 had been steadily clearing up, and with the threat of more high-altitude nuclear explosions gone, the Imperial forces on Defense knew it was only a matter of time before these invaders would be systematically ejected from Tokyo-3. preferably into Mount Fuji.

It was, then, with some degree of shock that Stormtroopers ran quickly to get out of the way of a Running Unit-04 and Mass Production Evangelion Unit sprinting through the city and connected by an unearthly glowing light.

Upon reaching the edge of the hole, Unit-04 and its impromptu ally peered down into the Geofront, before the two pilots spoke to each other.

"I hate to say it, but we're probably going to have to destroy your ride," Kyle said, looking down again at the rubble before as a plan began to materialize.

"It was to be expected," Armisael stated, looking down as well before grimacing. "That fall should be enough to critically damage this monstrosity's core."

Kyle smiled darkly, "not to mention that monstrosity would make a nice cushion for Unit-04."

Armisael grimaced slightly, "I will have to remain in control up until the final moment, otherwise this one could shake you lose and deploy its wings to slow its fall."

Looking down once more, Kyle nodded. "Ready?" He asked, psyching himself up for the jump. This was going to be a rather lengthy fall.

Armisael didn't reply, merely leaping down, the moment she was through spreading out her body to catch as much air and slow her descent so that Kyle could keep up. With the eighty-feet of length the angelic extension had quickly following, Unit-04 leapt in after her, remaining vertical as it fell until it 'landed' squarely on the Mass Production Eva's back.

Once Unit-04's feet were firmly in place, Armisael twisted slightly, redirecting their fall towards the Pyramidal headquarters of NERV. Without its wings deployed, however, the horizontal distance traveled was minimal, and both Unit's would only clear the rubble of the fallen building by a dozen meters.

Moments before impact, the tentacle of light withdrew from the Mass Production Eva, and it shuddered once, as the Dummy Plug System regained control. Unfortunately, it was far too late to do anything, as both Units touched down, the Mass Production Unit doing an ugly, high-speed belly-flop into the valley floor, as Unit-04's feet drove the white-armored Eva's back armor through its chest, impaling the core and pushing much of the internal mess of pseudo-organs and machinery into the ground below.

"Touchdown," Kyle said, wincing at the shock the landing caused to Unit-04. Despite their durability, numerous armor plates had buckled, cracked, or shattered under the stress, and the underlying biological systems had been strained close to the breaking point.

"Unit-04 heavily damaged!" Lieutenant Ibuki cried out, as details quickly crawled across the display before her. "Both legs close to failing, armor integrity compromised," she elaborated, a moment before Misato's voice overrode hers.

"Kyle, there's an Eva-Lift nearby that can take Unit-04 down to the Loading Bay," the Major stated, as a patch of grass retracted and the telltale metal corridor appeared as a lift rose to a halt at ground level.

Unit-04 moved weakly towards the lift, limping across the valley before it managed to lock itself in place. A moment later the big green Unit disappeared and the patch of grass rose back into place to hide the entrance/exit as if it had never been there.

Far to close to Tokyo-3 for her liking, Rei continued to battle her assailant with an almost detached interest. Much like the foe Kyle and Armisael had finally dispatched, this MPE was far more creative, and despite the length of time she'd had to take it out, it showed only superficial damage, while Unit-00 was beginning to overheat.

Suddenly, and from out of seemingly nowhere, two more forms crashed into the space between them, the battered hulk of an AT-AT pushed ahead as Unit-01 drove a second Mass Production Eva forward with mindless determination, Unit-01's hands wrapped around the enemy Eva's neck in a grip that was buckling armor plates with alarming speed.

Behind him, the other MPE lay still with Shinji's Progressive Knife stuck in its chest, the second progressive weapon to become trapped in the super-dense core of a dispatched foe. Despite this lack of a weapon, however, Shinji was succeeding, and with a sickening series of cracks and crunches, the Mass Production Eva went limp in his grip as numerous systems, devices, and organs were pulverized under the pressure of Unit-01's grip.

Grabbing one of the Heavy lances lying nearby, he returned and brought the weapon up to impale the core, when it shifted in his hand, the lengthy blade reforming into the gray-yet-familiar shape of the Lance currently aboard the _Jupiter's Thunder_. With a shrug, Shinji drove it home, the MPE twitching once before going still, and Shinji turned to join Rei in her fight.

Unnoticed by him, and all but forgotten by Rei, the other active Mass Production Eva, receiving new orders, turned to engage the nearby AT-AT's that had been free to engage all approaching troop carriers, APCs, and Tanks.

Deep within the darkened bowels of Tokyo-3, Kyle coughed up the last of the LCL as he stood beside Unit-04's Entry plug, which quietly cycled back into Unit-04 with a whine of electrical motors.

"Misato, when it's safe, send down the Barge for Unit-04 and Shinji and Rei," he said into a hand-held comm taken from one of the numerous Imperials within the loading bay. True to plan, the catapults were constantly loading and unloading AT-STs and AT-PTs throughout Tokyo-3 to respond to the enemy forces now breaching the city.

Giving a quick order to the Officer in Charge to begin evacuating all non-essential troops, Kyle took off towards Central Dogma, and the LCL-Plant within, where Lilith's crucified form rested. In the darkened corridors, the Emergency lights beginning to fade as their internal batteries slowly ran out of power, the oppressive silence was a startling contrast to the sounds of battle going on within Tokyo-3, above.

With the climate control system disabled, the corridors had begun to cool noticeably, and the LCL still dripping from the plugsuit brought goosebumbs to Kyle's skin. "And there's only another mile or so of corridors between here and where I'm going," she grumbled as she made her way downward.

Rei's opponent, Misato thought with a grimace, was definitely a cut above the others, and only after discussing it briefly with Ritsuko and Commander Fuyutsuki did she and General Hongo modify their plans. The Eva Units -01 and -00 battled was classified as MP-Alpha, and the one currently tearing through their eastern defensive line was classified MP-Beta. With both Shinji and Rei attacking, the Alpha was falling back steadily, but until it was dispatched, it was far too dangerous to send either of the two Units to intercept the -Beta.

To the east, said Beta was currently gripping an AT-AT by its head-like command module, pausing a moment before twisting so violently the vehicle fell over even as the head was pulled clear of the AT-AT's body.

A nearby AT-AT spat devastating bolts from its heavy laser cannon, but the Eva, either sensing the blast or merely lucky, sidestepped at the last moment, and the green blasts of concentrated energy shot off into the tree line, the two large explosions emanating from the point of impact utterly ignored by the combatants.

Turning to face the one that had fired, the Mass Production Eva prepared to charge when a third AT-AT fired, this one's temple-mounted medium repeating blaster taking it in the arm and spinning it violently as the armor bubbled and frothed as it was vaporized by the blast.

Doing its best to dodge the combating behemoths, a pair of AT-STs backed up towards the city, taking a quick couple shots at an approaching JSSDF Tank before ducking behind a corner a moment before a nearby building shattered as another AT-AT was thrown into it.

General Hongo, who'd been watching the battle, scowled before calling the _Jupiter's Thunder. _

"Go ahead General," Nabiki answered, her attention, much like Makoto's nearby, was focused on the small digital map of NERV Headquarters, and the flashing dot that represented Kyle as he, currently 'she,' ran towards the LCL Manufacturing Plant.

"The Mass Production Evas do not exhibit any signs of having an AT-Field. The Unit on the east side of town is tearing through our defensive line. I need it taken out before the entire sector's defenses collapse."

Nabiki shook herself free from watching that dot which represented the last line of defense between Humanity and Annihilation, and nodded, "Just send the coordinates when your Units are clear of the blast-zone."

General Hongo's eyes narrowed, "If my Units pull back, the target will follow to continue engaging. I need those shots, and I need them now."

Nabiki's eyes widened as she realized what the General meant, before nodding. "If you're sure," Nabiki stated simply, as the coordinates were received.

"I'm sure," the General stated quietly as Nabiki fed the orders to a nearby captain.

"Ma'am, there are Imperial transponders within the blast radius," the captain replied as he prepared to fire.

"I know, Captain," Nabiki said, before nodding for him to continue. Swallowing, the captain turned and relayed the order, silently cursing whoever was in charge of this attacking army.

"Damn you, SEELE," Nabiki hissed, as a green blast lanced out from the _Thunder_, catching the Mass Production Evangelion and four AT-AT's in a blast that devastated a good portion of the fields just outside the city.

Within Tokyo-3, the blast briefly stopped the fighting as soldier and Stormtrooper alike ran to dodge the sudden hail of falling glass broken by the shockwave. When the deadly rain had finally stopped falling, the two opposing armies re-emerged and picked up where they left off, the air filling with bullets and blaster bolts.

"Fifteen minutes until Teleporters become operational," SHODAN stated calmly.

"That's nice," Makoto said absently as she continued to watch her Husband's transponder make its way through the corridors of NERV. Without power, the location was based on a best-guess using triangulation from _The Nerve_ and _Jupiter's Thunder's_ sensors and SHODAN's accurate maps of the complex, but every once in a while the battle between them and the origin of the signal or the structure itself made the signal fade on occasion, or oddly appear to run through walls as the alignment was thrown off by a meter or two.

"Lady Kino, we have them!" An officer cried, with an almost palpable sense of dark pleasure in her voice.

"Have who?" she asked, turning to look at the officer with a frown.

"Milady, SHODAN has backtracked the signals from the Mass Production Evangelion Units and-" the Officer was cut off as SHODAN interrupted.

"-I've planted a virus in their system, which rooted out an entire shadow international computer network apparently created and used solely by them."

Makoto Kino frowned darkly at this, and Nabiki stepped forward, "Makoto, stay here and keep an eye on things. I'll take _The Nerve_. Whether or not we win or lose, SEELE will reap what it has sown."

Makoto was about to protest, when she realized her place was here, while Kyle, now cut-off from all but the most basic of communications tried to stop the final Angel from eradicating all life on Earth as they knew it. With a nod, she turned back to the display.

Nabiki turned towards the officer in charge of the teleporters. "Is it safe enough for ship-to-ship travel?"

"Yes, Admiral, the radiation-" he started to reply, before she cut him off.

"Good. Send me there. Now," she ordered, thinking back to all the atrocities she'd read about or witnessed since coming here, all of which could be laid directly at SEELE's feet. She had faith in Kyle, but Kaworu's AT-Field had been described as so powerful not even light could get through it when it was at full strength. She could do nothing to help him down there, but she was heading out to do what she could, and any objection she might have had against taking a life or lives was violently shoved aside as she considered what SEELE had done to the people she had once thought of as merely characters in a story. People she'd fought beside, sometimes literally. This wasn't payback, revenge, or reprisal.

As the _Thunder's_ bridge faded out of view from around her, the officer manning the teleporter station heard the Admiral whisper before she disappeared completely: "This is Justice."

* * *

Author's Notes: Another cliffhanger... curses. And so late, too... Well, I guess the next piece is the big finale.. It's actually almost finished, but I need to clarify a few things that are confusingly written, and tie up some remaining loose ends and it'll be up, and I'll be done with Eva. Once more, I owe my pre-readers thanks for pointing out the times I went overboard, under-detailed, or just plain _bad _during the course of writing. Thanks guys.

Oh, and I know where I'm going next, but feel free to offer suggestions.. I'm not promising I'll go everywhere people want me to, but I'm always looking for something fun to do.


	3. Finale

"Lady Kino!" Someone shouted.

Spinning, Makoto's gaze fell on a now-nervous looking Captain who's words died away when he realized he might have tried a little too hard to get her attention.

"Well?" She asked finally, growing impatient. While the interruption from her worries was probably what she needed, being interrupted for nothing was not exactly the best way to use her time.

The Captain nodded once, before reporting, his voice wavering only slightly. "Engineering reports a change in the status of the box."

Makoto had to think for a moment to remember what that meant. Then it hit her. "What kind of change," she asked suddenly, hoping it wasn't what she thought it might be.

"They report that it's counting down."

Nabiki, who stood nearby, paled slightly as the implications sunk in. Makoto met her gaze for a moment, before nodding once, slightly.

"How much time do we have left," The Admiral asked softly.

"They... just over twenty minutes," he replied in a similar tone. Despite their subdued tones, everyone on the bridge had quieted at the initial announcement, and almost everyone had clearly heard and understood what it meant.

"All right, everyone, we knew this would happen eventually," Nabiki said, loudly, drawing everyone's attention. "You all know what to do. Get to work!"

As the Command crew began to bustle about in preparation for the imminent Universal jump, Nabiki turned to look at Makoto. "He'll be all right."

Makoto turned back to the holographic map showing the city of Tokyo-3, and both its defenders and attackers in color-coded miniature.

"I hope so. If he fails, we're probably not going to be here in twenty minutes," she finally replied, before turning towards one of the many screens positioned around the bridge, "SHODAN, is it safe for us or _The Nerve_ to enter the atmosphere?"

"With the constant nuclear barrage from China taken care of, it should be relatively safe. If, however, the submarine that took our shuttle down tries to launch at us, it could pose a threat. Our shields can withstand a few blasts, but repeated explosions will be taxing. And the damage to our ground forces if the explosion is closer will be devastating. This is why the Admiral did not propose such a maneuver."

Nabiki blinked at the lengthy explanation, before frowning, "Rather chatty, all of the sudden, aren't you, SHODAN?"

The AI's face sneered slightly, "I am entitled to my own emotions. However; I am, as was requested, a servant of Kyle's, so if he dies, it means I've failed him. Everyone aboard feels the same way. And none of us take well to failure."

Nabiki, surprised at the response, merely nodded at the AI's final comment. "I can relate." Straightening up, she turned towards Makoto. "Well then. We'll just have to win this one, won't we?"

A moment later _The Nerve_, a mile long and bristling with weaponry, suddenly broke orbit in the one direction its observers had assumed by its sheer size that it could never go. Straight down.

Far, far below, in the slowly darkening tunnels of NERV, Kyle paused as the air around her seemed to thicken. The metallic wall beside her glistened in the emergency lighting as condensation beaded on the walls like pebbles, and slowly ran down towards the floor as if seeking something far below.

There had been few signs of Kaworu, save for a few doors that appeared to have been forced open, but since there was only one place to go, it wasn't exactly hard to lose the trail.

Still, it was unnerving to think that the faux-Pilot had come so far in so little time. She hadn't been that far behind Kaworu, as far as she knew, and the layout, while probably drilled into the Angel's mind, wasn't the easiest to navigate even with the lights on and a map. So where-

Kyle froze as a figure stepped out of the alcove up ahead. The darkness of the corridor made their features impossible to make out, but they had short hair, and it was too small to be an adult.

Suddenly, the figure blurred and where before they had been fifty some-odd feet away, they were now three feet and closing slowly, with slow, methodical steps. While leaping back as multiple wings sprouted through the Plugsuit, Kyle noticed the figure had red eyes and light-colored hair, but it wasn't Kaworu.

"Rei?" she asked, as she settled to the floor, her fall far slower than it should have been. Looking closer, however, Kyle realized the figure wasn't quite the same person he thought. The Rei he knew at least wore clothes. And this one was staring at him blankly, much like... "You're one of the clones."

A dripping noise behind her made Kyle spin, and her mouth fell open as she spotted a half-dozen of the clones standing behind her where none had before.

"We are not the imitation," they all suddenly spoke, the numerous voices resonating far more deeply than they should have. However, that was not an altogether unfamiliar thing either, and Kyle's eyes narrowed. "Lilith?"

"The time has come, Messenger, for Unification. Even you and yours will not be able to resist the call."

Kyle frowned. "You mean Makoto and Nabiki and everyone on the ships will be absorbed?"

"_All_ will be Unified. This time, there is no other choice. The end draws near."

Kyle shrugged, "I still have to try. Are you going to stop me?" She asked, frowning at the Rei standing in his way. Instead of answering, the figures dissolved into LCL, the sudden mass of puddles coating the floor around her with a squelch. Despite the disappearance of the clones, however, Lilith's voice carried through the hallways again, through far softer than before: "you may do... what you feel you must..."

Shaking off the sense of impending doom _that_ cryptic message implied, Kyle turned and ran towards the LCL Manufacturing plant, no longer holding back. While Lilith might have been serious, Kyle could only hope that the message had meant she was too far away to stop Kaworu. That might be the case for a normal human, but with a wish-augmented physique, and a divine body by the powers of Jusenkyo, she was anything but normal.

Above, the battle going on in the streets of Tokyo-3 had changed. Despite their superiority equipment-wise, the Imperial forces had repeatedly fallen back towards the town center, as the JSSDF and UN Peacekeeping forces poured in through whatever cracks in their defenses they could find, overwhelming their technological superiority with sheer numbers.

Inside the garrison, where the Imperial forces were rallying for what their enemies thought was a last-stand, Misato and General Hongo turned away from the video screen linking them to the two ships in orbit, grim smiles on both their faces.

"Do you think they have any idea what's about to happen?" Misato asked wryly, as the General relayed a new set of orders to the troops massing outside.

"Not a chance in hell," the General replied, as a faint rumble shook the walls and floor around them.

The fighters saw it first. Being in the sky themselves, it was a well-trained requirement that they have an innate understanding of the sky and all that flew within it. However, to the pilots of the Fighter Jets currently entangled with a swarm of TIE-Defenders, there was nothing in their training, or on Earth, that could give them the understanding and composure to deal with what was now descending from above.

A shout went up from the JSSDF troops as the sky began to darken, and one finally took the time to look skyward, where a triangle of utterly alien proportions grew rapidly as it fell towards them.

A few skyward shots were fired, but most of the troops, utterly unaccustomed to seeing something so massive directly overhead, panicked.

"Nice to see the look of terror on their faces," Kei said, as the view screens showed the mass of soldiers running for whatever cover they could find. A moment later, _The Nerve's _ventral batteries opened up, and they quickly found their cover wasn't nearly protective enough.

Far above and away, The_Thunder's_ engine's suddenly roared at full output, inertial compensators straining as eleven miles of warship accelerated through near-earth space. Maneuvering thrusters and repulsors fired a moment after the burn started to re-orient the ship so that it streaked around the planet in a heavily modified, interstellar power slide.

The rotation brought the vast majority of the ship's weapons to bear on the planet. "Coming up on the first target," SHODAN announced, before a sudden burst of Turbolaser blasts rocketed towards Earth. Below, in a heavily defended complex outside Beijing, SEELE 10 had only a moments notice as alarms began going off before the entire complex went up in an explosion that literally atomized everything within a half kilometer.

Another heavy burst of their maneuvering and main thrusters, and the _Thunder's_ trajectory shifted, curving northward on its west-ward track, and in a minute, they were approaching the space above St. Petersburg. There was another burst of thrusters, and during the trajectory change, another blast was sent towards the earth, heavy turbolaser bursts concentrating on a seemingly innocent-looking office building set a few miles outside the city. As the rubble cooled, however, the walls of the crater were littered with collapsed chunks of concrete and steel, hinting at a rather impressive subterranean structure. SEELE 04 didn't even have time to look up before the ceiling had collapsed on him.

As the maneuvering burn ended, the ship was left heading southwest, and it was there, a few moments later, as it passed over Berlin, that another attack lanced out, this one far more subtle than the earlier two. As opposed to using the turbolasers on a metropolitan site, the Teleporters, no longer hindered by a radioactive cloud as they had been over Tokyo-3, activated in rapid succession, and a moment later, a series of thermal detonators, set to explode far more powerfully than the one Dr. Akagi had used on the MAGI, detonated, bringing an apparently abandoned apartment building down as three of its seven floors were vaporized in a blast that left all witnesses frightened and confused. SEELE 09 had only had a chance to blink as the cylindrical device appeared on his desk, an instant before it exploded.

As the ship thundered on, it passed over Britain, Morocco, Argentina, Cuba, North Dakota, and Alberta, using whatever tactic to quickly destroy SEELE and their support base without harming those nearby. It was a rather gross waste of fuel, but time was limited.

Finally, the _Thunder_ straightened out, its engines flaring again as it headed back towards Japan. More specifically, to where it had hovered for the majority of its stay, below which the final Committee member, Keele Lorenz, sat smugly within a bunker outside of Tokyo-3. The entire subterranean structure lay unlisted on any maps of the area and erased from every database SEELE didn't have total authority over.

While the _Thunder_ was off taking care of SEELE, _The Nerve_ was now hovering stationary over Tokyo-3 so low it looked as if some of the skyscrapers were about to enter the main hangar. Despite appearances, however, the mile-long ship still had a great view of the countryside, and with the EMP dissipating, surgical blasts from the lighter weaponry struck the assaulting army even as point defense systems picked off the remaining fighters as they attempted to flee.

"Why didn't we do this before?" Lieutenant Aoba asked, turning to look up at Commander Fuyutsuki.

"The threat of nuclear bombardment," Mei stated evenly, as she stepped out onto the bridge from a doorway set into the wall behind Fuyutsuki. Nei and Kei appeared as well, and the trio turned to look at the birds-eye-view of the city currently displayed on the giant wall monitor.

"Cant this ships shields handle that?" Lieutenant Ibuki asked, frowning.

"Yes, but at this distance, what do you think would happen our troops outside right now if a Nuke went off against our shields?" Nei asked, pointedly.

Maya blanched as she considered this, as Kei spoke up, "There are also civilians in the Angel shelters."

"But that's not why we're here," Mei said, turning her attention to the NERV employees below.

Everyone looked at them with confusion, before Nei elaborated. "We've just received word that the _Thunder_ and _The Nerve_ will be leaving this universe in about twelve minutes."

There were murmurs from the crew, as they considered that, and Maya glanced down to see that what Mei was saying was being broadcast throughout the ship, and to everyone below.

"As you can tell, we don't have much time, and we need answers... who would like to come with us, and who would like to stay here? We will leave with you what supplies we can, but we do need to hurry, as time grows short.

An alarm, however, broke the silence before anyone could speak up, and Lieutenant Ibuki, most familiar with the various alarms the Magi could and would make, paled.

Dr. Akagi, who'd been making her way to the bridge when the alarm from the bridge was broadcast over the intercom, stumbled before running at an all-out sprint.

On the ground, Stormtroopers and Imperial vehicle drivers shuffled their machines around anxiously, as barges and transports exited the hovering Destroyer to begin a rapid un-deployment. It was at that time, however, that another battle took a turn for the worse below their armored feet.

As she rounded the corner, Kyle couldn't help but gasp at the mangled heap of metal that remained of the armored doors to the LCL plant. Slowing to a jog, she braced herself mentally as she approached, stepping gingerly over twisted scraps of metal, before finally entering the cavernous expanse.

"Kaworu!" Kyle cried as she spotted the figure standing on the edge of the platform extending into the LCL towards Lilith's crucified figure.

The Angel Tabris turned and smiled. "You know my name."

Kyle, taken aback by this, blinked and nodded slowly. "I know lots of things. You realize that that's Lilith, don't you?"

Tabris' smile weakened, and he nodded slowly before turning to look back at Lilith, spreading his arms out towards her. "This is Lilith, the source of the Lilim, or mankind, as you refer to yourselves. And I am born of Adam, the source of those whom you call Angels." Tabris suddenly turned, and Kyle frowned as the smile on his face melted into a look of anger. "And _you_... You are neither Man nor Angel, but something both between and beyond."

"Actually, I'm just a guy who's always in the wrong place at the wrong time," Kyle quipped, shifting her weight slightly so that she could react to whatever Kaworu tried.

"An inept pronoun, at the moment, though I've been told it fits... from time to time." The grin was back, but the anger in his eyes hadn't lifted at all.

"So why are you doing this? Playing into SEELE's-" Kyle was cut off as a look of pure rage flashed across the Angel's face and he screamed.

"DO NOT MENTION THEM!" Kaworu, who'd previously looked only slightly unkempt, suddenly stood in the middle of a miniature tornado, his hair whipping around wildly, and his fists at his side clenched so hard Kyle could see blood dripping from where his nails cut into his palms. But even more noticeable, now that the Angel had tilted his head back, were the tears, streaking silently across his face as the wind blew them off their southbound journey.

"... what did they_do_ to you?" Kyle asked, in shock. While not usually sympathetic towards an enemy, it was fairly obvious Kaworu had been through something pretty bad if he hated the people he was working for. "And why are you doing this?" She asked again, even more confused.

"You humans have achieved much in your time here on Earth. I've come to understand you know how I feel about music, so I won't waste my breath telling you about it, but I'll let you know another thing I got to know_intimately_ in my time here..."

Kaworu paused, and that grin appeared again, as he closed his eyes and turned his face skyward as if basking in the sun, and not in a darkened room illuminated by dying emergency lights.

"Death." He whispered.

"What!?"

Kaworu grinned and turned slightly, so that he could look at Kyle out of the corner of his eyes. "Torture."

He paused, before turning to once again face Kyle, his grin wavering as he slowly elaborated. "It is not something to be proud of, and yet the ones who worked with me... _on _me- took pride not only in what they did, but going into detail how they had learned what they have." He paused for a moment, an introspective look crossing his face, before piercing Kyle with another gaze as she tried to contemplate what the Angel was saying.

"Did you know that the facilities here that birthed a multitude of clones of Ayanami, a hybrid of Yui Ikari and Lilith, were duplicated and used in secret to create me, a hybrid of Adam and an anonymous DNA donor?"

"I... yes," Kyle replied quietly, still trying to process what she was being told.

"Good. And you are, I'm sure, aware that if Rei were to die, before you destroyed those facilities here, that a new Rei could be removed, with the soul and some trace memories of the previous Rei if ever the current Rei were killed?" He asked, taking a step towards the surprised Universal Traveler.

"Yes," Kyle responded, snapping out of the surprise as Kaworu took another step closer.

"Then know this,_interloper_: I am not the original Kaworu, nor the third, like Ayanami," Kaworu stated.

"They tortured you until you died. Tortured you until you broke... through as many bodies as it took... how..." Kyle felt sick. "How many times...?"

"Did I die?" The Angel asked, nonchalantly. He shrugged melodramatically, "I honestly lost count. The facility wasn't as limited as the one here, and I was, after all, one of their primary means of achieving their goals."

"So why are you doing this?" Kyle asked, her frown deepening.

"If I fail... If I die, then where will I awaken? How else can I end this cycle where to fail is to face torture and death and more torture?" Kaworu shrugged, then shook his head. "No. I have to do this. It ends today. Humanity, You... me. _Everything_." He turned towards the crucified form of Lilith once more.

"Wait!" Kyle cried, feeling torn. She was supposed to kill him. And yet, unless they took Lilith with them, how would they prevent the next Kaworu from trying, or the next? No, death wouldn't solve anything here. Only delay the inevitable. Then Kyle had an idea.

"Come with us. We... I promise I'll keep you alive so they won't get a hold of you, you can leave here, deny them your soul, and their goal."

Kaworu shook his head," I cannot."

Getting pissed, Kyle growled, "Why not? You're the Angel of Free Will, aren't you? So fucking _choose_ to do something. Do the right thing. Those who hurt you deserve to die, not only for what they've done to you, but for what they've done to _everyone_. Don't choose to condemn humanity to an end they never asked for."

Kaworu shook his head again, though he smiled slightly, "you misunderstand, I think. There is a small bomb implanted in my head. In twenty minutes, it will detonate, or if it receives a special signal that's been broadcast continually since I entered the Geofront. There's not enough time."

Kyle balled his fists at the implication, then straightened up. "I cannot let you do this. There must be another way."

Kaworu just smiled sadly. "It will happen whether you want it or not. However, I will, in one final act of _chosen_ defiance, give you ten minutes to escape. You and yours do not belong here, and if you leave, the loss will not hamper their Instrumentality."

"And if I chose to fight?" Kyle asked, taking a step forward.

"You will die," Kaworu stated, before a glowing orange wall appeared between them. Blinking, Kyle reached forward and touched it, surprised for a moment before realizing he was looking at an AT-Field. Kaworu's Ultimate field, capable of stopping anything.

As her hand fell to her side in silent defeat, the Field faded until it was merely the familiar series of orange concentric rings. "The clock is ticking... will you save your people, or condemn them as SEELE has condemned theirs?" The AT-Field thickened again, and Kyle sighed at the implications, before turning and running out the door.

There was very little light in the corridors of NERV now, but despite that, the inevitable, irrevocable future now beginning seemed to have modified the atmosphere. As Kyle ran, the little light remaining looked diffused, almost as if the world were underwater, and the stark, cold corridors now looked somewhat ethereal, even otherworldly as she passed intersection after intersection.

Suddenly, a figure materialized ahead in the darkness. Not bothering to stop, Kyle sprinted on, only to realize as she passed that it was a Rei-clone... Or an extension of Lilith. As she ran past it, the figure began to speak, and ahead, another figure materialized, speaking as well, so that as Kyle ran, the constant speaking went uninterrupted despite the speed at which she moved, or the turns she took.

"The end has come, little one, and with it the hopes and dreams of mankind will all come together. It is with mixed feelings that I do now what has been so prophesized by those much like you. Your soul, touched by God, but still so human, will not be spared, despite its otherworldly origins, or Angelic shell."

Kyle grimaced slightly as she turned a corner, catching the wall with out hand to redirect the momentum in the narrow corridors. Suddenly, a new figure stepped out before her, far taller than any Rei-clone, and with a gun-mounted flashlight in its hands.

"Fire!" Someone shouted, and suddenly the air was filled with bullets as JSSDF Troops found themselves face-to-face with a Priority Target.

Momentarily forgetting her AT-Field, Kyle collapsed mid-sprint, and found herself sliding forward rapidly as the floor was coated in what smelled like LCL. Spent bullet casings were scattered around as well, and in a brief second of clarity, Kyle realized they'd probably been killing whatever Rei-clones they found, which reverted to LCL after taking enough damage. "Thanks Lilith," she mumbled as her slide took her under the hail of bullets and into the legs of one of the soldiers, who fell to the floor.

Rolling out of the way of a kick, Kyle lashed out with a kick of her own, catching one of the soldiers in the knee, which collapsed backwards with a wet snap and a scream of pain. While generally loathe to take a human life considering what was going to happen soon, this was a fairly clear-cut case of kill-or-be-killed, and with grim determination, Kyle's foot lashed out again, catching the screaming soldiers throat with enough momentum to crush the windpipe.

The four other soldiers had backed away during the tumble, and were now preparing to fire their weapons at Kyle when she suddenly realized she was currently in her cursed form. As the first gun barked and a stream of armor-piercing bullets tore free from the barrel, they flattened against a glowing plane of concentric hexagonal light.

They shifted their gaze to something behind her, and turning to look while the AT-Field stopped more bullets, she spotted a Rei-clone hovering over the body of the soldier she'd just killed, staring down at it almost curiously. Returning her attention to the fight, Kyle waited for a break in the firing as two soldiers stopped to reload, the others offering covering fire.

Leaping for the wall, Kyle launched herself off of it, before dropping her AT-Field and rolling away from the stream of bullets that chased her across the hall. With a glance and an almost dismissive wave, the two firing suddenly stopped, a moment before their lower halves fell to the floor, their upper torso held up by her AT-Field which had materialized inside them. Dropping it, the two upper halves fell away with a sickening splat as the open-ends released the organs across the LCL-coated floor.

The two remaining soldiers stared in shock at their comrades for a moment, before moving towards an alcove where a trash can and some vending machines sat. As they ran, one tossed a grenade back towards Kyle, but a quickly raised AT-Field bounced it back their way, and in their haste to get to "safe ground" they didn't notice the Grenade rolling along beside them.

When it went off, the vending machines, trash can, and soldiers disappeared in a ball of flame that rebounded off her AT-Field a moment before the ceiling shuddered and began to collapse. When the rubble stopped shifting, Kyle stared at the pile of debris for a moment, before realizing that it now stood between her and the exit she'd been heading for.

"Well... shit," she muttered, as she took off back the way she came, heading towards the Center of NERV, where she hoped the Imperial Forces using the catapults were still evacuating.

Aboard _The Nerve_, alarms continued to blare as Dr. Akagi typed rapidly at a MAGI Terminal, pulling up fifteen-year-old data and comparing it to what was rapidly unfolding below. After a few seconds in which disbelief made her verify and re-verify everything MAGI-Omega was telling her, she finally glanced up at the Trio and Fuyutsuki, all of whom were waiting for her to explain what was happening. With a soft nod, she confirmed their worst fears. "It's Third Impact."

Nearby, a Technician aboard monitoring the sensors was startled as the warnings covering his screen disappeared and a notice suddenly informed him that the systems he was monitoring was now free to use. "Ma'am! Teleporters online!"

Makoto Kino, having just been informed via the video link that Kyle had either failed or not made it in time to stop Kaworu, was startled by the shout. Turning to fix the Technician with a gaze that left him shaking, she nodded, before turning to the ever-present screen displaying SHODAN's visage. "Recall the troops, and prepare to evacuate the citizens from the Angel shelters." With that, she turned and walked off the bridge without another word. Nabiki, who was standing nearby, scowled at nothing and everything in particular, before turning to SHODAN. "Retrieve Keele Lorenz and put him in a detention cell. He is not to join Third Impact." Before anyone could say anything, she left the bridge in a rush, hoping to catch up to Makoto.

In the hallway outside, Makoto stumbled forward, without the eyes of the bridge officers on her, she let the weight of Dr. Akagi's announcement get to her. Suddenly, she felt someone place a hand on her shoulder. Pulling free she spun, bringing a fist back to punch whoever had grabbed her. Before she could, however, Nabiki leapt back, holding her hands up in surrender.

"Whoa! Makoto, it's me."

"He's..." Makoto started, looking down at the floor again when she realized there was no threat. All she could think of was the implications of the earlier announcement.

"He's probably fine. Remember, this is Kyle. He's got luck in spades," Nabiki said, trying to help. She, too, knew what the worst case-scenario was, but she hoped for the best.

"He wouldn't... lose. He couldn't. His purpose here- _ours_, even- was to avoid this!"

"I'm sure he did everything he could... but remember, Kaworu Nagisa... Tabris, had an AT-Field that was stronger than anything previously seen. Kyle and Rei could deploy one, but it was nothing compared to an Evas or an Angels. Tabris could have stopped him without even really trying. Kyle's good... but there's a bit of a power difference."

Makoto looked at Nabiki and wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes. "And if you're wrong?"

"If I'm wrong," Nabiki said, glancing back at the bridge door with a frown. "If I'm wrong, then feel free to hate me, but _I'll _be sure to take it out on Chairman Lorenz before and after we try him for crimes against Humanity."

Makoto's face turned nasty. "_We_ will take it out on him. And if you're right..." she trailed off.

"If I'm right...?" Nabiki asked, as Makoto straightened up.

"If you're right... the three of us will take it out on him, before we let the survivors have him." Makoto smiled darkly at that, before wiping her eyes once more and turning towards the bridge door.

"We'll wait until the last second for him... knowing Kyle, he's probably on his way back right now." Nabiki said, putting a supportive arm around Makoto.

"Or waiting for the right time to make an entrance," Makoto quipped, before shaking off the last of her misery. "Let's get this over with."

Far below, Kyle wasn't heading straight back, but was doing her best to return, now that her path was peppered with squads of soldiers willing and trying to take her out.

"For the love of-" She uttered as she ran straight through a four-way juncture and the sound of automatic rifles went off from one of the side-corridors. There was movement ahead, and suddenly the tunnel was lit up by an RPG racing towards her at just over four-fifths the speed of sound. Falling back in shock, there was a roar as it passed overhead, and a flash of heat as the exhaust heated the air around her. Seconds later the missile reached the end of the corridor and exploded against the far wall, the blast ruining the hearing of anyone nearby as the pressure wave threatened to rupture eardrums and knocking anyone still standing to the floor.

There was a brief moment of peace as she lay there staring at the darkened ceiling, before the flash of a ricochet nearby brought Kyle back to the present. Rolling over and willing her AT-Field into existence again, before flaring it as strongly as she could in case another AT-4 wielding soldier felt like going for some overkill. Climbing to her feet and shaking her head before resuming her sprint, she angled the AT-Field to rotate beneath her as she leapt the prone bodies of the soldiers firing at her and continued on her way.

Aboard _The Nerve_, which was even now using its teleporters in conjunction with the_Jupiter's Thunder's _to clear out the multiple Angel Shelters scattered around the city, a separate window popped up on an unattended terminal at the same time Kyle's AT-Field was brought to full-power. Unfortunately, nobody was there to watch it, as the bridge crew was fully focused on organizing the retrieval of Units -01, -00, and -04. Unit-04 had recently emerged from an Eva-Lift as the last of the Imperials within the launch bay had sent everything of value to the surface upon receiving the order to retreat.

As had been discovered during the retrieval of Unit-04, an Evangelion was too large and too complex to teleport without causing serious structural damage, and as such, while most military hardware and personnel were being teleported from the surface to the ship as quickly as possible, an AT-AT barge was even now dropping over the three Evangelion Units, Rei and Shinji holding the empty unit up as its loading doors closed before the entire barge slowly lifted off the ground, oblivious to the few shells and missiles that exploded against its thick-armored exterior.

Within the Angel shelters, people were panicking as fellow-civilians mysteriously disappeared in flashes of light, only for them to calm down when they suddenly found themselves in a battleship-grey room in which multiple Imperial soldiers explained to them that they were being evacuated for their own safety.

Keele Lorenz frowned at the monitor showing the interior of the nearest Angel Shelter, a hidden camera monitoring the shelter housing potential pilots, among others, suddenly began to empty mysteriously. He would have almost thought it was Third Impact, but from what had been described in the true Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as what the few sensors his single-core MAGI system were displaying, Third Impact had only just begun, and the final unification hadn't yet begun to affect the living, only the recently-deceased.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and when his visor re-activated, he found himself seated in a small gray cell, much like the prison cells within NERV, though somewhat smaller, and brightly lit.

"Keele," someone said behind him. Turning, he felt his jaw drop as he realized just who had spoken his name.

"Ikari! What is the meaning of this?"

Gendo, who looked far more disheveled than he'd ever seemed before, merely smiled, before adjusting his glasses. "It looks like you're being denied the very thing you sought to instigate."

Keele scowled. "Damn you Ikari. If you've had anything to do with this-" he started, before a speaker set into the ceiling crackled to life.

"Prisoner 001 does not," a strangely distorted voice spoke, "but you, prisoner 002, will soon meet those whose choice it was to deny you the fruits of your labor. And then..." The voice, which Keele was now sure belong to someone insane, trailed off knowingly.

Keele scowled, hating being lead on, but knowing precisely what he was expected to ask. "And then?"

The voice was silent for a moment, and Keele glanced at Gendo before opening his mouth to speak. Gendo just stared back in apparent amusement, as the voice suddenly began to laugh, cutting off whatever he had to say. Unlike before, this laugh was chillingly hysterical, and aside from the feminine voice, there were other, accelerated, delayed echoes and dragged-out resonations that made it sound like a chorus of children and failing voice recorders had joined in. When the door opened and two Stormtroopers walked in, grabbed him by his arms, and dragged him out despite his sudden shouting protests. Gendo, unable to bear it any longer, joined the Rogue AI in laughing at this sudden turn of events.

With a scream, the final JASSDF soldier fell over the rail and into the cryogenic fluid below. Turning to survey the bay, Kyle was disheartened by the lack of Imperials anywhere. The floodlights were still blaring, but some of them had been destroyed, leaving parts of the bay coated in thick shadows that seemed to shift as the entire floor began to vibrate.

"It has begun," someone said from behind her. Spinning, she spotted another Rei-clone standing a couple feet away, another clone standing over the body of the soldier whose partner she'd just chucked over the railing.

"Kaworu's touched Lilith? Merged, or whatever?" Kyle asked, scowling.

"As we speak he..." the clone paused, then rippled, "we..." the ripple suddenly turned into a shudder, and Rei's face was replaced by Kaworu's. "I have started it. You have very little time, interloper."

Kyle scowled, and the Kaworu-clone dissolved into LCL, a moment before the dead body on the catwalk did as well with a sickening pop like a dropped water balloon. The phantom Rei turned to gaze at her, before fading out.

Glancing around the launch bay wildly, Kyle searched for some sort of escape, before looking at the multiple doors set in the ceiling that lead to the surface. "If only I could fucking fly," she grumbled, before realization hit her.

In _The Nerve_, Dr. Akagi turned towards the command bridge, where the Trio stood. "We have to gain altitude. If these readings are correct, the entire Geofront is going to release a burst of energy that will vaporize everything within a hundred kilometers.

Nei nodded down at the doctor, before turning to Mei, who was busy using the command desk's terminal. "How's the evacuation going?"

"Almost done. We've abandoned the equipment and are just getting people... she trailed off for a moment, before looking up at Nei. "There! That's everyone."

Kei, having heard that, turned towards an Imperial officer nearby, "Take us out of here, alongside the _Thunder._"

Dr. Akagi's eyes were glued to the screen as moments later, the City of Tokyo-3 was engulfed in a blaze of light, the buildings above the ground reduced to their component parts and billions of tons of dirt, rock, and plant life around the Geofront rapidly joined the buildings as the Black Moon of Lilith, the shell of which had formed the armored "ceiling" of the Geofront, was exposed for the first time since First Impact, 4.5 billion years ago.

Within the Geofront, the pyramidal structure that was NERV Headquarters shook ominously as if in an earthquake, and piece of the structure began to fall as it slowly shook itself apart. Kyle knew in the original timeline, the structure had withstood this, but without power, the shock absorbers Dr. Akagi had described weren't active, and the structure was taking more stress than it had been designed for, despite its relatively stable shape.

Kyle stood below one of the catapult doors with a look of extreme irritation on her face. While before her wings in this form had been relatively easy to understand, a quick attempt to bring them out had resulted in the multiple wings of light she'd sprouted back in the Medical Center aboard the _Thunder_. Even more distressing was the utter lack of flight she'd been able to attain with them when jumping down from the catwalk. Only her wish enhanced reflexes and angelically-durable body had allowed her to survive that drop without breaking any bones, though she was sure a rib or two had cracked.

Thinking back to everything she knew of the Angels, she realized that most of them didn't have wings, but flew anyway. Sachiel, Shamshel, Ramiel, Zeruel and Armisael all flew without them, and Tabris was supposedly capable of it, as well, though she hadn't seen it. So how...?

The answer hit her so suddenly she laughed once, a short bark of desperation-fueled shock as she thought inward, to the core she knew to be lodged in her chest, and tried to stroke it with an AT-Field. Instantly, she felt her body lock itself into place, and with the slightest nudge, she willed the field up, feeling the floor drop away from beneath her as her core moved, her whole body following along despite the fact that at its size, the core should have pulled itself free from her chest.

Glancing down, she realized her wings had disappeared, but the glow from behind her had not weakened, instead it seemed to have grown, and when she turned, she spotted a pair of glowing white helixes growing where her wings once had, the human sized appendages just like the ones that Unit-04 had sprouted when Armisael had emerged from the core to assist.

With a thought, the appendage lashed out ahead, and a chunk of the metal wall suddenly fell away as if it had been gouged by a giant spoon. Not even bothering to watch the metal strike the floor, Kyle turned towards the metal door in her way, and willed herself forward, her new appendages writhing ahead of her wildly, sending pieces of door and chunks of the shafts walls falling towards the retreating floor as she gained speed and entered the tunnel.

"There's something..." Dr. Akagi muttered, typing away at a terminal as_The Nerve_ reached its position beside the _Thunder_ and prepared to depart. While this was unlike the Third Impact detailed in the packet Nabiki had brought down so many months ago, and there was a noticeable change from the events that had happened fifteen years ago, she knew mostly what to expect. With a gasp of surprise, she realized what she was looking at. Aside from the massive AT-Field that was even now slowly warping into the life-ending Anti-AT-Field, a second, smaller AT-Field was moving away from the epicenter at a steadily increasing speed. Quickly calling up the recordings of all the Wave-patterns on file, she stared in shock at the strength of the current Field compared to any before, but it was a definite match.

"He's coming! Kyle's rising rapidly from the Geofront!" She shouted.

Aboard the _Thunder_, cheers came up from the bridge crew as the announcement was broadcast over the open video-link, and Makoto smiled brightly, while Nabiki flashed her a quick grin before raising her voice above the sudden shouting. "Sensors on full power, SHODAN, teleporters on standby, prepare a Hyperspace jump to the outer rim of the solar system as soon as we have him, let's get the _hell_ out of here!"

As officers scrambled to comply with the sudden orders, Nabiki joined Makoto at the holographic display, which was now detailing, via a feed from the Thunder, Kyle's ascent from the Geofront, which was now rising out of the ground and heading up towards them under a power the sensors aboard the _Thunder_ had no understanding of whatsoever, and _The Nerve's_ could only guess at.

"Fuck, I'm slowing down.. not going to make it.. gotta hurry," Kyle muttered, as she flew through the tunnels and pushed herself a little more, the walls sliding by even faster. A few moments ago, her ascent had seemed to falter, and her sudden empowerment of her core let her feel something utterly alien but definitely existing somewhere below. And now, as she added a burst of speed and did her best to avoid the falling debris of armored doors shattered by her new "wings," the thing below her, whatever it was, was rising.

"No... it's growing" she realized, as her senses seemed to register that as it came towards her, it also spread out below her. Not daring to look back, she twisted around a large falling slab of metal as the next armored door exploded out of her way, a moment before the tunnel twisted away, and she winced and corrected, obliterating a large chunk of the armor as she tried to cut the corner a little close, and wincing as bits of metal bounced off her as she re-centered herself in the tunnel. Despite the lack of power, the tunnel was well-lit, and Kyle knew that more than likely the glow was coming from her. Despite that oddness, however, she welcomed it, as it allowed her to see the obstacles in her way, like that door up ahead, and it gave her enough time to lash out with a wing and destroy it before she crashed into it.

"Anti-AT Field is fully formed and expanding!" Makoto Hyuga said, as the large screen across the way displayed an image of the white field growing outward in all directions from where Central Dogma's core had been. On the map as well, was a small blinking dot detailing where Kyle was, rapidly ascending through the myriad shafts that lead to the surface.

"Damn, he's heading straight up, instead of leaving out the side!" Misato said, watching the screen.

"He probably doesn't know the side-shafts are now exposed closer to the base," Dr. Akagi replied, before frowning, "He's moving fast, but that Anti-AT-Field is accelerating as well..."

"Fast? He's about to break the sound barrier," Shigeru Aoba stated, reading off what the sensors were telling him.

"He's almost to the surface," Nabiki said, watching the same thing those on the bridge of _The Nerve_ were in the smaller tactical display in the _Thunder's _bridge.

"There's not much air out there, but he's going very fast, Ma'am... we might have to catch him with a tractor beam before we can beam him aboard," The technician in charge of the teleporters said.

Makoto winced, realizing that the Geofront had nearly exited the atmosphere while her attention had been on the rising dot within, and with a nod, she spoke, "Do what you must, but be fast. He didn't race out just to die in the vacuum of space or get caught up in Third Impact. How much time until we jump?"

"A minute and twenty seconds, ma'am," someone replied instantly.

"And how long until that Anti-AT-Field reaches us at its current rate of acceleration?" Nabiki asked.

"About forty-five seconds, Admiral." The same officer replied.

"Not much time," Nabiki mumbled.

"More than enough," Makoto replied, with a slight smile as she watched the dot come closer and closer to the surface.

It was getting hard to breath. Kyle wasn't exactly worried yet, since most of what she was doing at the moment was more mental than physical, but adrenaline had made her heart race, and while she wasn't exactly gasping for breath, it was getting harder to get the air her body demanded, almost like she was at a much higher altitude...

"Oh, son of a-" she groaned, realizing what had happened and why it had seemed like she was slowing down. She hadn't slowed at all; the tunnel had been moving with her! The twists she'd undergone implied she'd traveled around the shell of the Geofront towards the roof, where Tokyo-3 had been, but if the entire structure had risen, she'd have probably been better off taking a side path, she thought, ducking under a flying piece of door. 'Too late now,' she thought, as another door gave way before her. Now, however, she had to get out before they got too high for her to breath. Already it felt like they were almost a mile up, and who knew how good the seals in the armor were?

Suddenly, the tunnel widened considerably. Ahead, a door much large than the others loomed, thick rails and retrieval mechanisms bordering it on all four sides, and she knew she was there.

"Finally!" she shouted, putting on a burst of speed and reaching out with her wings, preparing to rip the doors in her way apart. At that moment, that final burst of speed was enough, and Kyle broke the sound barrier, the metal walls channeling the sonic boom back the way she came, where it dissipated into nothingness against the ever-increasing Anti-AT-Field, and ahead, meeting the door as her rapidly moving appendages cut huge gouges into it. Unlike the other doors, it failed to collapse, and just before she hit it, the structurally weakened door, holding in much of the remaining atmosphere within the Geofront, and slammed by a sonic boom, buckled, exploding outward with a rush of crystallizing atmosphere that glowed eerily in the light Kyle gave off, as pieces of the door spun away like pellets from a giant shotgun.

And in the center of it all, moving at just over the speed of sound, and glowing like a miniature sun, Kyle emerged into the ultra-thin atmosphere almost_fifteen miles_ above the surface, setting off hundreds of sensors even as thousands of Imperials watching screens all over both ships cheered.

There was _no_ air here. Climbing rapidly, she suddenly felt an invisible force grip her and slow her ascent, and with so little air left, she couldn't even scream her outrage as she felt the Anti-AT-Field climbing ever closer.

Suddenly, there was a flash, and she felt air around her again. Falling to the floor beneath her with a lack of grace and sucking in a huge breath to replace what had been sucked from her longs by the altitude, she took a couple more gasps, before finally feeling a little less likely to die.

Lifting her head from the surprisingly familiar-looking floor, she found herself staring at a pair of legs that belong to- "Makoto!" she cried, finally realizing she was safe, and had made it.

Makoto, who felt her eyes watering, just stepped forward and helped Kyle to her feet, before latching onto her with a bone-crushing hug. Despite the protest of her cracked ribs, Kyle couldn't help but hug her back, glad to have made it in time.

"Hyperspace jump in Five, Four Three, Two, One," Nabiki said formally, even as she watched the couple holding onto each other nearby. Outside, as the Anti-AT-Field grew closer, having expanded beyond the Geofront, the two starships in orbit suddenly accelerated away, rapidly reduced to specks and then nothingness as their Hyperdrives kicked in, propelling both into Hyperspace.

After a moment, during which the stars outside had been replaced by the swirling blue mass of Hyperspace, the starts outside reverted to what everyone had grown used to, and nearby, _The Nerve _waited along side the much larger _Jupiter's Thunder_ as a timer built into a box nobody'd been able to access slowly counted down the remaining seconds.

"I suppose I should have taken a commlink or something," Kyle said, while still holding on to Makoto. Despite the tears, she laughed, knowing she was trying to lighten the mood a little.

"I'm just glad you're back," she whispered before sliding free from the hug, though not quite letting go.

"I..." Kyle trailed off, looking down, no longer meeting her eyes. Before she could continue, Makoto pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. "You did everything you could... I know you well enough to know that much. My biggest fear wasn't that you failed... but that you died trying."

"I'm still alive," Kyle said, smiling softly at her.

"I know," Makoto replied, before pulling Kyle into a kiss despite her currently being in her cursed form. And as the two lovers celebrated their reunion, the timers struck zero, and with a flash, the two ships disappeared from the universe entirely.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Well, that's that. There are, of course, future scenes to write and all... Yui's still stuck in Unit-01, Asuka in Unit-04... and Armisael in Unit-04, as well as some refugees to calm down and explain things to, a NERV crew to integrate or disband, and more... Thanks once more to my pre-readers, who's diligent oversight kept me from making a fool of myself on multiple occasions. Until next time...


End file.
